ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Rehabilitation
A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial to Examine the Impact of a Therapy Dog Intervention on Loneliness in Adult Patients Hospitalized in a Psychiatric Unit
Provisionally accepted
- 1Center for Human-Animal Interaction, School of Medicine, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, United States
- 2School of Nursing, University of Maryland, Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland, United States
- 3Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, United States
- 4Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, Tufts University, North Grafton, Massachusetts, United States
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Background and Objectives: Loneliness has been linked to a number of health threats and is associated with significant morbidity and mortality risks among people with mental illness. Loneliness fully mediates the relationship between societal stigma and depression as well as thoughts of self-injury and is a precursor to suicide attempts and relapse in people with substance misuse disorders. Research Design and Methods: Individuals hospitalized for the treatment of mental illness (N=60) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: dog + handler intervention (AAI), handler only conversational control (CC), or usual care (UC) for 20 minutes per day for three days. An Analog scale and two versions of the UCLA loneliness scale (UCLA-SF and UCLA-LS) were used to assess loneliness. Linear Mixed Models with random intercepts were applied to compare changes in loneliness between conditions pre/post daily intervention sessions, pre/post 3-day intervention phase (days 2-4), and baseline to post-intervention (days 1-5). This is a provisional file, not the final typeset article Results: Loneliness decreased significantly more in the AAI group relative to the CC or UC groups in daily pre/post intervention sessions, and over the course of the 3-day intervention for all participants (p < .01). Within those results nuanced male/female sex differences and dog ownership status differences are reported. In stratified analysis, reduction in loneliness for the AAI group occurred from baseline to follow-up, but only among dog owners (p < .01). Discussion and Implications: These results indicate that AAI was effective for reducing loneliness in people who are hospitalized for the treatment of mental illness. These results support and extend previous research and suggest that AAI has the potential to be effective as an adjunctive treatment for loneliness among people hospitalized for mental illness.
Keywords: animal-assisted intervention, Loneliness, Well-being, Therapy dog, Psychiatric In-, Patients
Received: 24 Feb 2025; Accepted: 07 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Gee, Townsend, Friedmann, Barker, Thakre and Mueller. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Nancy R Gee, nancy.gee@vcuhealth.org
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