Ståhl Aada, Salonen Milla, Hakanen Emma, Mikkola Salla, Sulkama Sini, Lahti Jari, Lohi Hannes
Department of Psychology and Logopedics, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
Department of Veterinary Biosciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
Npj Ment Health Res. 2024 Jun 7;3(1):27. doi: 10.1038/s44184-024-00072-z.
It has been described that many puppy owners experience a state called puppy blues involving stress, worry, anxiety, strain, frustration, or regret. While puppy blues is a commonly used term among dog owners, the term is nearly nonexistent in scientific literature. In turn, analogous phenomenon, postpartum affective disturbance of infant caregivers, is well described in the literature. This study aimed to develop and validate the first questionnaire to evaluate puppy blues. The methodology involved generating scale items based on a qualitative review of 135 pilot survey responses from people who had experienced distress during the puppy period, conducting exploratory factor analysis for the final scale items from a dataset of 1801 answers from Finnish dog owners (92% women), and collecting test-retest data from 265 individuals to assess the consistency of the measurement of items and factor structure across time. In addition, we collected an independent sample of 326 owners of 1-2-year-old dogs who answered the survey both regarding puppy period and current moment. The results indicate that the scale is a valid and reliable tool for measuring dog owners' negative experiences and feelings related to puppyhood. We discovered three factors that describe different aspects of puppy blues: Frustration, Anxiety, and Weariness, which accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in puppy blues. The study demonstrated good internal consistency and consistency across two independent samples for the three identified factors. The test-retest reliability of the factors was good. Responses for the current timeframe compared to puppyhood experiences revealed significantly lower current scores across all factors for the current period, validating that the scale captures distress during puppyhood that diminishes over time. Interestingly, we found a fading affect bias where recollections of the experiences in the puppy period became more positive with time. Our findings shed light on the characteristics of puppy blues and provide a useful retrospective tool for measuring it.
据描述，许多幼犬主人会经历一种被称为“幼犬忧郁症”的状态，包括压力、担忧、焦虑、紧张、沮丧或后悔。虽然“幼犬忧郁症”在狗主人中是一个常用术语，但该术语在科学文献中几乎不存在。相反，类似的现象，即婴儿照顾者的产后情感障碍，在文献中有详细描述。本研究旨在开发并验证首个评估幼犬忧郁症的问卷。该方法包括基于对135份来自在幼犬期经历过困扰的人的初步调查回复进行定性审查来生成量表项目，对来自1801名芬兰狗主人（92%为女性）的数据集的最终量表项目进行探索性因素分析，并从265个人那里收集重测数据，以评估项目测量和因素结构随时间的一致性。此外，我们收集了一个由326名1至2岁狗狗的主人组成的独立样本，他们就幼犬期和当前时刻都回答了调查问卷。结果表明，该量表是测量狗主人与幼犬期相关的负面经历和感受的有效且可靠的工具。我们发现了三个描述幼犬忧郁症不同方面的因素：沮丧、焦虑和疲惫，它们在幼犬忧郁症的差异中占了很大比例。该研究表明，对于所确定的三个因素，在两个独立样本中都具有良好的内部一致性和一致性。这些因素的重测信度良好。与幼犬期经历相比，当前时间段的回复显示，当前所有因素的得分都显著更低，这证实了该量表能够捕捉到幼犬期的困扰，且随着时间推移这种困扰会减少。有趣的是，我们发现了一种消退情感偏差，即随着时间推移，对幼犬期经历的回忆变得更加积极。我们的研究结果揭示了幼犬忧郁症的特征，并提供了一个有用的回顾性测量工具。
