Bowen Jonathan, Bulbena Antonio, Fatjó Jaume
Affinity Foundation Chair for Animals and Health, Department of Psychiatry and Forensic Medicine, School of Medicine, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
Queen Mother Hospital for Small Animals, Royal Veterinary College, North Mymms, United Kingdom.
Front Psychiatry. 2021 Apr 14;12:622060. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2021.622060. eCollection 2021.
Dogs are a source of companionship and comfort for their owners, but the degree to which this might translate into real emotional and social support has not been quantified. Emotional and social support are essential to help people to get through personal crises such as bereavement. In this study we characterize the social support owners obtain from their dogs, provide evidence of how widespread this social support is amongst dog-owners, and show how social support from dogs can increase during a crisis (using the COVID-19 pandemic as an example). We collected data from a representative population-based sample of Spanish dog-owners and found that most respondents said that their dogs helped them to get through tough times. They got comfort from physical contact with their dogs, shared activities with them and treated them as confidants in a similar way to friends and family. These are all key aspects of social support, and dogs offer the advantage of being more available than human sources of support. It would be expected that the support that dogs provide would be increased during a time of personal crisis and when we looked at data collected from a convenience sample of Spanish dog-owners during the COVID-19 confinement that is what we found; during the confinement owners engaged in more shared activities with their dogs, hugged them more often and turned to them more as a source of companionship and comfort ( < 0.0001 in all cases). However, although owners did confide more in their dogs ( < 0.0001), the effect was not as great as for other aspects of social support. We suspect that this is because people were able to use telecommunications such as video conferencing to maintain their human confidant relationships. Our findings indicate that dogs can substitute for humans as sources of some kinds of social support when conventional sources are unavailable. Our conclusion is that where a dog is present in a household, it should be regarded as an important resource for social support. This should be considered when designing clinical interventions and when public health decisions are being made.
狗对其主人来说是陪伴和慰藉的来源，但这种陪伴转化为真正的情感和社会支持的程度尚未得到量化。情感和社会支持对于帮助人们度过诸如丧亲之痛等个人危机至关重要。在本研究中，我们描述了主人从他们的狗那里获得的社会支持，提供了这种社会支持在狗主人中广泛程度的证据，并展示了在危机期间（以新冠疫情为例）狗给予的社会支持是如何增加的。我们从西班牙狗主人的一个具有代表性的基于人群的样本中收集了数据，发现大多数受访者表示他们的狗帮助他们度过了艰难时期。他们从与狗的身体接触中获得安慰，与它们一起参与活动，并像对待朋友和家人一样把它们当作知己。这些都是社会支持的关键方面，而且狗具有比人类支持来源更容易获得的优势。可以预期，在个人危机时期，狗提供的支持会增加，当我们查看在新冠疫情封锁期间从西班牙狗主人的便利样本中收集的数据时，我们发现了这一点；在封锁期间，主人与他们的狗进行了更多的共同活动，更频繁地拥抱它们，并更多地向它们寻求陪伴和安慰（所有情况下P<0.0001）。然而，尽管主人确实更愿意向他们的狗倾诉（P<0.0001），但这种影响不如社会支持的其他方面那么大。我们怀疑这是因为人们能够使用视频会议等电信手段来维持他们与人类知己的关系。我们的研究结果表明，当传统支持来源无法获得时，狗可以替代人类成为某些类型社会支持的来源。我们的结论是，在有狗的家庭中，它应该被视为社会支持的重要资源。在设计临床干预措施和做出公共卫生决策时应考虑到这一点。
