New research investigating salivary cortisol levels reveals that spending time with dogs helps reduce stress hormone levels in children with and without special needs.
Researchers led by Kerstin Meints from the University of Lincoln in the UK compared dog-assisted intervention with relaxation intervention and no intervention in their experiment to determine how dogs help children's mental health.
Stress in Children
According to the website of the organization called Nationwide Children's, stress that occurs continually could take a toll on a child's health. It may affect their emotional lives as adults, physical health, and longevity.
Stress is a natural reaction to things and situations outside the body. It could be helpful for survival, such as the fight-or-flight response, but it could also be unhelpful and life-damaging. Unfortunately, children are especially vulnerable to repeated stress activation since they are still in the period of development.
Stress in children can be divided into positive stress, tolerable stress, and toxic stress. Positive stress is part of healthy development, while tolerable stress response activates the body's alert systems for survival. Toxic stress occurs when a child experiences strong, frequent, and prolonged diversity that changes their baseline state.
Prolonged stress response activation can disrupt the development of their brain and other organ systems, increasing their risk for stress-related diseases and cognitive impairment.
As a response to toxic stress, the child's brain chemistry, anatomy, and gene expression also change. Toxic stress weakens the developing brain, leading to learning and behavioral problems and physical and mental health problems. The presence of positive social-emotional support and healthy relationship from an adult determines if the stress can be tolerable or toxic.
Dog-Assisted Interventions Help Reduce Stress
In the study titled "Can Dogs Reduce Stress Levels in School Children? Effects of Dog-Assisted Interventions on Salivary Cortisol in Children With and Without Special Educational Needs Using Randomized Controlled Trials," published in PLOS One, researchers tracked the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the saliva of 105 children aged 8 to 9. Of them, 44 children have special needs.
The children were randomly divided into three groups: a dog group, a relaxation group, and a control group. According to Science Daily, participants in the dog group interacted with a trained dog and handler for 20 minutes, while the relaxation group meditated for 20 minutes. Sessions for both groups were carried out twice a week for a period of two months.
Results show that the first group with dog-assisted intervention significantly lower the cortisol in children with or without special needs. On the other hand, participants in the control and relaxation groups had increases in mean salivary cortisol over the course of the school term.
The team noted that those who participated in a group of individual sessions with dogs had no significant increase in cortisol. Their stress hormones remain on average and are even lowered immediately after their dog sessions. They also saw similar patterns for children with special needs who had the dog-assisted intervention.
Researchers concluded that interacting with dogs can successfully reduce psychological stress in children. But they also pointed out that more research is needed to identify the ideal amounts of time and contact with dogs for optimal effect.
RELATED ARTICLE : Children Sleeping With Their Dogs Maintain Good Sleep Quality as Those Who Sleep Alone, Debunking Long-Held Belief
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