Benefits of Pet Therapy

IN THE MANAGEMENT OF PAIN AND STRESS IN THE TERMINALLY ILL.

Aiken (1994) reports that people with terminal illnesses experience a variety of emotions and concerns. These include: fear of the unknown, loneliness, sorrow, pain and suffering, loss of self-control, loss of identify and all of the physical and debilitative losses associated with the terminal condition. Palliative medicine can be a help for some of the pain and stress these patients are experiencing; however, more and more frequently, hospitals and hospices and other health-care organizations are supplementing their treatment with diverse forms of "alternative medicine" (Broadie & Biley, 1999).

According to Frisby (2000), one of the methods that is being used as an alternative medical approach across a wide assortment of health conditions is "pet therapy, sometimes termed "pet facilitated therapy", or "animalassisted therapy". Essentially, this mode of treatment consists simply of the patient interacting with an animal (e.g., a cat or a dog) on a routine basis. The purpose of this paper is to examine the pet therapy literature in order to determine the approach's efficacy for remediating the pain and/or suffering of the terminally ill patient. The paper ends with the formulation of conclusions based on the reviewed material.

Pet Therapy For Reducing Pain and Suffering

Before examining the pet therapy literature as it relates to the e

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s reduce the sense of isolation that often accompanies terminal illness in general and HIV/AIDS conditions in particular. Further, since many of the men in the sample had already lost other loved ones to AIDS, the attachment and tactile comfort that the pet provides was said to reduce their feelings of stress and emotional pain in this regard. In another more well-controlled study, Pepper (2000) investigated for the effects of pet therapy on the self-reported mood states of a sample of HIV/AIDS patients (all male). Each man was randomly assigned to one of two treatment conditions: a 15minute interaction with a visitor and a dog, or a 15minute interaction with a visitor who talked with the patient and brought him books about dogs. All subjects in the study were required to complete the Multiple Affect Adjective Check ListRevised (MAACL) and the StateTrait Anxiety InventoryForm Y as pre and post measures. Each subject received one visit and was administered the two measures 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after treatment. Further, the pet-handlers were required to complete an observational checklist by recording the frequency of seven behaviors related to subjects' emotional expressions. Findings of Pepper's (2000) study
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Approximate Word count = 2618
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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