Being a pet in America is a plum gig. About half buy them birthday presents. And it's a two-way street. People who have pets tend to have lower blood pressure, heart rate and heart-disease risk than those who don't.
Those health boons may come from the extra exercise that playing and walking require, and the stress relief of having a steady best friend on hand. Scientists are now digging up evidence that animals can also help improve mental health, even for people with challenging disorders.
Though the studies are small, the benefits are impressive enough that clinical settings are opening their doors to animal-assisted interventions--pet therapy, in other words--used alongside conventional medicine.
The rise of animal therapy is backed by increasingly serious science showing that social support--a proven antidote to anxiety and loneliness--can come on four legs, not just two. Animals of many types can help calm stress, fear and anxiety in young children, the elderly and everyone in between. More research is needed before scientists know exactly why it works and how much animal interaction is needed for the best results.
But published studies show that paws have a place in medicine and in mental well-being. In one study , a stressed-out group of adults were told to pet a rabbit, a turtle or their toy forms. The toys had no effect. But stroking a living creature, whether hard-shelled or furry, relieved anxiety. It worked for people regardless of whether they initially said they liked animals.
Animals don't have to be cuddly to help. In a study published in the journal Gerontology , elderly people who were given five crickets in a cage became less depressed after eight weeks than a control group. The act of caring for a living creature seems to make the difference. Among the most-studied therapy animals, horses have been involved in medical treatment plans in Europe since the s. Favorite Thing: Ants, probably. Via freakymartin. Secret To Happiness: Delight in companionship.
Via break. Favorite Thing: Calamari. Via funfunmtgxd. Via picfor. Secret To Happiness: Persistent, unmitigated enthusiasm without context. Favorite Thing: Interrupting. Via tehcute. Secret To Happiness: Getting it. Just getting it. Favorite Thing: Seeing the bigger picture. Via damncoolpictures. Secret To Happiness: Wisdom, grace, refinement, and a philosophical temperament. Via ohmyowls. Favorite Thing: Being a little owl. Via fark. Secret To Happiness: Taking life as it comes. Favorite Thing: Being the second-most poisonous vertebrate on the planet.
Via keywordpicture. Secret To Happiness: Seeing each new challenge as an opportunity. Favorite Thing: Rolling in trash.
Via dominionpaper. Favorite Thing: Actually being one of the little things. Via dooce. Further, among owners of both a cat and a dog, 85 percent were more attached to the dog. But of course, attachment also depends on the behavioral characteristics of owners. In , Scientific American conducted a survey on different kinds of pets and their owners. Taken together, this research provides three rules to enhance the happiness of those looking to add a nonhuman to the household. Dog owners might be happiest on average, but as the drug ads always emphasize, your results may vary.
The Scientific American survey above found that owner personalities differ a great deal depending on the type of pet. For example, are you a mellow type? Fish owners consider themselves calm and emotionally stable. Highly educated? Hamster owners are the most likely to hold an advanced degree. A group of Ph. Cat people are higher in neuroticism and openness. You might be tempted to note that dog owners are, well, kind of like dogs, and that cat owners are like cats.
Knowing the types of matches that work well on average can help you decide on a new friend. But if you want to try to change your personality , you might decide to cross the cat-dog divide. For example, if you feel you should work on your openness, you might want to step outside your pet comfort zone and get a cat.
The most common rationale for choosing one dog over another is its appearance; for a cat, it is how it behaves with people. Breed popularity is also important: Different kinds of dogs tend to follow a boom-bust cycle kind of like baby names roughly every 14 years. Take the adorable labradoodle, which all my neighbors seem to own, but which I had never heard of a decade and a half ago.
Given the research above, this is probably a worse strategy for happiness than picking a pet for love and companionship.
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