In August, Congress passed the PAWS Act, Puppies Assisting Wounded Service Members, directing the Department of Veterans Affairs to begin a pilot program to fund service dogs for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. It's a reflection of an emerging field of research that is finding that trained service dogs can help people cope with post-traumatic stress disorder. The VA is not the only place interested in the power of animals to help heal and comfort humans.
In recent years, therapy dogs have shown up in hospitals, on college campuses at exam time, and even in offices where management is looking for ways to reduce workers'stress. At the same time, though, emotional support animals have become a favorite butt of late-night TV jokes, conjuring images of people boarding planes with peacocks and hamsters in tow. So what does the research say about the effectiveness of animal-assisted therapy? When can animals help reduce distress and improve our mental health? What's the difference among service animals, therapy animals, and emotional support animals?
What's backed by research and what is not? And what about regular household pets? How do our companion animals affect our health and well-being? Do our pets make us healthier and happier?
Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills. Our guest today is Dr. Maggie O'Hare.
Dr. O'Hare is a psychologist and an associate professor of animal-human interaction at the Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine. Her research focuses on the ways that humans interact with animals, including both household pets and highly trained service animals. She runs National Institute of Health-funded studies on the effects of service dogs on veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and on animal-assisted interventions for children with autism.
She has published dozens of peer-reviewed publications and textbook chapters, and her work has been covered widely in the media, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and National Public Radio. Thank you for joining us today, Dr. O'Hare. Thank you so much for having me. It's my pleasure. Let's start by defining what we're talking about when we discuss the different types of animals that I mentioned in the introduction, service animals, emotional support animals, therapy dogs.
These terms get thrown around and I think mixed up. by people who think they're interchangeable, but they're not. So can you tell us a little bit about what these terms mean and the differences among them? Absolutely, because I do agree.
People get confused about this, and it's important at the start to figure out what we're talking about. And kind of if we take a step back, what we see is that the roles for dogs in our society are increasing, and that's why we have these different niches of where dogs are helping. So the first category is a therapy dog.
These are intended to provide comfort to individuals in different medical, residential, or academic settings. So if you think about, as an example, nursing homes where a dog might come in and visit, or hospitals where a dog might come and visit a child who is receiving treatments. These are someone's personal dogs that they volunteer as a therapy dog to bring in and provide comfort to many different individuals.
The second category is an emotional support dog. These are medically prescribed for one specific individual to provide therapeutic benefits through dedicated companionship. So instead of visiting many people in many settings, the emotional support dog stays with that one person. And then the final category potentially of the highest level of rigor and training is the service dog.
And that is a dog that is trained to do a specific task to help mitigate a disability. And that's really what distinguishes that service dog from emotional support dog. The emotional support dog doesn't need to be trained to do a specific task and doesn't need to be with someone with a specific disability. Now, you're mentioning dogs specifically, but I think there are other animals that can be involved in some aspects of this type of work, right?
Absolutely. So if you're looking at a service animal, there are two species that can be service animals. Are you aware of what those two are?
Do you know what the backup outside of a dog is? I don't. All right. Well, that's exciting that we can learn today.
So the other species that can be a service animal is a miniature horse, actually. So the logic behind that, there's a similar lifespan, a similar trainability, similar size in some cases. And so although it is vastly less common, it is legally permissible to have a miniature horse as a service animal.
Now, if you talk about emotional support animals, there are no species restrictions. So that does mean that technically anyone can have any species as their emotional support animal. Where there are some nuances are really airlines.
So airlines used to say, if you have an emotional support animal, they can come on the plane. Then they battened down the hatches a little bit and said only if they're specific species. And now many airlines have moved further to only service animals that are allowed to travel with people on airlines.
So where you are able to have that emotional support animal is really in your home of any species that you'd like. One of your main research projects is looking at the effects of service dogs on the mental health and wellness of military members diagnosed with PTSD and also their families. What have you found?
How can service dogs help people with PTSD? What exactly does the dog do? We've been studying military veterans with PTSD and their families for the past six or seven years now. And so what we've been able to do thus far is really compare cohorts of individuals who have a service dog to those who don't have a service dog.
And what we find repeatedly in each study is that veterans with service dogs show clinically lower levels of PTSD symptomology than those who do not have a service dog. Now, obviously, it's limited to those individuals who are interested in a service dog who wanted that in the first place. But we do see that their symptoms are presenting at lower levels.
We see that they have less absenteeism from work and an overall greater quality of life through their self-report. And when we dig deeper into that, what we find is that. They have trained tasks that they're using, right?
Because as a service animal, it's there to help the disability. And by and large, the most common task they're using is to help address their anxiety symptoms. So on average, about three to five times a day, they'll use some sort of task or command to have the dog help them with their anxiety.
So that might be asking the dog to lean up against them for deep pressure. That might be the dog noticing the individual's about to have a panic attack and nudging them to trigger them to come back to the present, take deep breaths and be mindful. So.
as a couple of examples of how the dogs are helping. So what we're trying to do is bring data behind these anecdotes that we hear. You know, so many veterans have said to us, I would not be alive if it were not for my service dog.
And although, you know, that is emotionally salient for me and meaningful for many, what, you know, doctors, policymakers, insurance companies are looking for is the data behind that. And that's what we're hoping to pull together and what we've been able to do so far. One interesting point that you've made is that there are some potential drawbacks, including the fact that service dogs make visible what is essentially an invisible disability. Can you talk about that? Is that a concern for many of the veterans that you've worked with?
You know, when we look at any form of animal-assisted intervention or service animal, any treatment, really, intervention, we want to ask, what is it doing well and what's an area where it can improve? And we were interested to find that for veterans, the biggest drawback... or challenge I suppose that they do bring up is that yes, when they're walking around in society without the dog, nobody notices them in the same way. But when they have their dog, people tend to love dogs and want to say hello and want to learn more. And so it draws attention to them.
And for some veterans, they say, you know what? It's been good for me. It brings me out of my shell. I talk to people more.
They show interest in me. And for other veterans, they say, I just want to go to the store and buy some milk. I don't want to be the subject of attention or interaction.
And I think that draws attention to the fact that we might need some more public education around this, around how to behave around people's service animals and how to be respectful. You've also studied animal-assisted interventions for kids with autism, including with service dogs, but also in some of your earlier work with guinea pigs in classrooms. First of all, how did you end up with guinea pigs of all animals?
And then what did you find in that research? How do these animals help kids with autism? Yes. Well, thank you for asking about that. I think it's a fun story now.
At the time, it was actually, it came out of a few challenges that arose. So, you know, I did my bachelor's degree in psychology and then I applied to do a Fulbright fellowship in Australia to study service dogs for autism. It was the perfect pairing. It was going to be with a veterinarian and a psychologist and the whole project would be so exciting.
So I flew, I graduated with my degree in hand. I flew to Australia. I arrived.
slightly jet lagged and I went straight to the university to meet with my mentorship team for this project. And I was informed, well, the psychologist has quit and we don't have any funding for the project. And so welcome. Go home. Well, that's exactly Kim, what I questioned myself in that moment.
You know, I finished the meeting and I had this long walk home. It was a long walk because I wasn't exactly sure where I was going. It was foreign territory.
A good time to think. And, you know, I reflected and I thought, do I turn around? Do I go home?
Is this a message that this isn't? going to happen. And on that walk, I really thought to myself, no, I want to study this. So what I did is first I learned to apply for a grant. I didn't know what that word meant before, but I did that.
And second, I had to find another source of animal. Service dogs are expensive. I had no funding.
So what I found out was that the local vet school was doing research on guinea pigs. And the type of research they did is they were breeding the animals. And then after day two of the guinea pig's life, they didn't need them.
So they would either euthanize the animal or give them to me for free. And so that was a very convenient and cost-effective model. I socialized the guinea pigs from that young age and developed a classroom-based intervention program.
And what I actually learned is that the guinea pigs were quite a scalable intervention. Not every classroom has the capacity to afford and care for a dog in it. But with the guinea pigs, we could have a housing enclosure.
in the classroom that was consistent and stable. And what we found is that for many of the kids having that there at all times, when they felt stressed, they could go sit next to the cage and watch the animals. And what we also found was that although for many adults, a dog seems more exciting than a guinea pig, for these children, they were so excited about these little creatures that they were going to learn to care for and nurture.
And honestly, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Well, how did the children... improve?
I mean, were they more socialized than to deal with other children, or was it just because they, you know, related to the animals? We found many different things from this program. So we were looking at children with autism spectrum disorder in mainstream or inclusion classrooms.
So we studied not only the child with autism, but also some of their typically developing peers. And what we found is that the children with autism were able to integrate more with their peers when the animal was present. They were talking more with their peers. They were looking at their peers more. They were smiling, laughing, and engaging more.
And we used a comparison condition of toys. So we compared the guinea pigs to toys. And as you know, you know, toys are designed, built, and sold to elicit engagement from children.
And so the fact that a guinea pig who's not doing anything particularly special could elicit more social behaviors was fascinating to us as we commenced in this field. And that was in the moment behavioral changes, but we also saw, you know, broader changes over time. Teachers and parents were reporting more social engagement, more social skills, and less challenging behaviors in the classroom as well.
Let's switch gears for a minute and talk about household pets. It's probably obvious to a lot of people that pets make us happy, but is there research that supports the idea that pets are good for our physical and mental health? What does data say? What does the data say?
That is what I eat, sleep, and breathe in my role. So I'm glad that you ask. And it's interesting because I think that many people or potentially pet owners or pet lovers will say, it's obvious. We already know this.
Why would we study it? But in actuality, you know, in some of the top psychology journals, people have questioned that and said, is this a mere hypothesis rather than, you know, a supported fact empirically? And I think one of the challenges comes from the way we study it, right?
a lot of it is correlational in nature, meaning that we don't know if the animal caused improved mental health or people with higher mental health to begin with go out to adopt or purchase an animal. So we're trying to tease that apart through different studies. And some of the best ways we can do that is look at when you're with the animal versus not. And we do find that when you're with the animal, you smile and talk to people more. You show changes in your physiology, whether that be increases in oxytocin or what's called the love hormone.
or reductions in your anxious arousal, such as heart rate or blood pressure, we are able to see these momentary changes. And I think where the field is moving is to find out whether these are related to long-term lasting or broader gains. And it's just been challenging because it's harder to randomize someone to get a dog versus not get a dog.
Humans are autonomous. And when they want to get a dog, they're going to go ahead and get it regardless of whether you want to assign that to them in the study. So I think we also gain a lot of knowledge from our service and therapy animal studies, although it is different. Those are groups where we can randomize and we can have that built-in waiting period to try and extrapolate some of the changes we see there to pet ownership. I think we need to take that with some caveats, though, because a service animal is often bred and trained and prepared specifically to be wonderful for the human and to behave, you know.
in specific ways, whereas our companion animals aren't always behaving or performing at that level. So I think that one of the key things that I like to talk with new or potential companion animal owners about is managing those expectations. You know, I think there's this dichotomy that we see, you know, some people say this pets are good for everything and they're amazing. And some people talk just about the challenges.
And I think ultimately it's a balance. And I think if owners can go in knowing, hey, the initial phases, there'll be some growing pains. You'll have to learn about each other. If you have a puppy or a small animal, there's going to be potty training.
But if you can build that bond and move through those initial tough phases, that's when you'll start to see some of those broader, longer-term gains when you develop that rich and intimate bond with the other creature. Are there differences among the kinds of animals that we have as pets? You always feel like, well, if you can hold the animal, if it's tactile, then that is going to... And you'll feel that on a gut level as opposed to having goldfish.
Or even if you have a tiny pet like a mouse or a rat where you can't really hug it because you're going to hurt it. Does that make a difference in the way that people react? Are they healthier or happier with certain kinds of animals as compared to others? I think there are absolutely species differences, and I think you tapped into a really key element of that, and that's that physical tactile element. But I think it's not necessarily that one's better than the other, but it's different.
So if you think about potentially fish tanks, we've had some really interesting studies that show how your heart rate and your blood pressure are lowered when you're looking at the fish tank. And so following studies like that, I mean, you're hard-pressed to find a doctor's office or waiting room that doesn't have a fish tank because after those studies came out, people realized that if it's going to reduce your anxious arousal, we want to have that in places that are going to become stressful to center your attention. So we have this theory.
It's called the biophilia hypothesis, and it's been around for decades. And it's the idea that as humans, evolutionarily, we're primed to look at animals and nature. And we have this, you know.
unconscious bias to attend to that. And when we have that external positive focus of attention, it can reduce our anxiety and our arousal. And so that's, you know, this species that we can't interact with physically, those things happen. Even when it's an animal that we typically would like to pet or interact with physically, if we just watch a video of those animals, we will see similar outcomes.
So I think you're gathering those benefits. And then when you do move into the place where you're able to physically interact with the animal, I think there's several different things that can happen. I think that that soft contact touch has been related to reductions in anxiety and arousal and also to increases in some of our bonding and social neuroscience love hormones such as oxytocin. So we're triggering those other elements. And I think that over time, if we look at social relationships and bonding, probably the touch piece.
is important in developing that over time. Though you might talk to a reptile or fish owner that argues quite differently. I have certainly met people who talk so fondly about the bond they've developed with other creatures, but I would say on the whole, yes, that contact does play a key role in the bonding element. I think somewhere in that answer, I heard you say something that explains why we love to watch cat videos. You know, that is a big one there.
Whenever I am lecturing about how we have this affinity to look at life and life like creatures, I do show elements of cat videos. You know, there's something called the Internet Cat Video Festival that's been going on for many years now, which I myself have not attended, but it's from what I understand, people watching videos of cats together. And there have been studies looking at, you know, when you watch cute animal videos, how that... affects your level of attention and your mood. And it does seem like when we have absence of the real thing, watching a video does a pretty good job.
So let's talk a little bit about emotional support animals. We had years of these viral news stories about people bringing peacocks and kangaroos onto airplanes. And then in December, TSA announced that airlines would no longer be required to accommodate emotional support animals only.
only trained service animals, as you said earlier. Is there research out there on whether these emotional support animals actually do help people cope with mental illness and emotional distress? Is this really a valid therapeutic treatment?
I think this is a growing area where we need more research. But what I will say is that if you think about a companion animal versus an emotional support animal, I mean, what companion animal isn't potentially providing emotional support? So I do think that we can draw on the literature we have about companion animals for broader impacts, and we can see that there are benefits that could be gained. But I don't think we have much research yet that's really digging into emotional support animals specifically. We've really started with companion animals and service animals, and I think emotional support animals will be our next big area to look into.
So let's talk about your career for a moment. You have a very unusual situation where you work in a veterinary school as a psychologist. My understanding is that you are one of one or two people who are in this position right now. And how is it different for a psychologist working in a veterinary school as opposed to being just in a psychology department someplace? It's a lot of fun.
So, you know, I've been in psychology departments and I've been in the College of Veterinary Medicine and you are correct. There's only. one other tenure track psychologist in a college of veterinary medicine that I'm aware of at the moment.
And I would say the main difference in working in the vet school versus psychology department is whether or not you have to defend what you do all day. So I think that in traditional streams of psychology, this isn't something that comes up in psych 101. It doesn't come up in your training. And so it is kind of a more niche field.
And when I was in psychology, I had to defend why it was a rigorous field of study. In the vet school, no one asks me questions. They accept and acknowledge and know how important it is because they see it every single day.
So I have to say, for me, it was so fun to be invited to do this podcast because my background, my trainings in psychology, I think it's the field where we should be studying this. And I don't think it has always been accepted as much as it it has been in recent years. And I think a lot of that has to do with, you know, once the National Institutes of Health started funding this, people took it a bit more seriously.
And now I also think that clinicians are seeing so many requests for a service animal, a therapy animal, animal-assisted intervention, and they are looking for data to answer those questions. And so I'm so excited to be able to share that data and inform our field. How did you get interested in studying human-animal interaction?
Was this something that you were always interested in, or did you start in a more typical human-only psychology program? I absolutely started in the typical way, in a human-only psychology program, and it was actually during my undergrad degree. You know, in psych classes, they will let you choose your own topic.
And naively, I thought I was inventing my own topic when I decided to think about... The impact of animals on children's empathy. As I started to look into it, I found it's actually a field where people are studying it. And I went to college at Vassar College in New York.
And there was a place just 45 minutes away called the Green Chimney School, which is a world leader in providing therapy animals in a school residential setting. So what I did is I reached out to Green Chimneys and I said, hey, what research are you doing? Can I do an internship?
Can I help you out? And they said. Hi, we do not accept interns that we don't have a program. We're not doing that much research. Thank you.
Goodbye. And for better or for worse, based on my personality, I persisted and said, you know, I have some ideas. I think I could come in once a week and help you, you know, set up informed consent and conduct research and really track these outcomes. And their clinical department was amazing and took me on and let me. start this journey with them. And that one thing led to another.
And I, I realized that I could keep pushing it. What I will say is that all along the way, I was advised not to make this my career. I was definitely advised to pick something mainstream. You have to have, you know, you need it to be developmental.
You need it to be social. You need it to be something that's in our career lines that we're used to seeing. And I decided to ignore that advice and continued to pursue my passion.
And I feel very fortunate that it worked out and that I can now run my own lab and study this and spend my days, you know, digging into the psychology behind why we interact with animals, how it impacts our mental health and wellness. And I'm heartened to see that I think there are a growing number of careers in this area. I'm not sure that everyone should ignore the advice to have a mainstream path to fall back on.
But I think that. you know, adding this into your portfolio is a growing trend. Did Purdue create this slot and you applied for it or did you go to them and tell them that they need somebody like you in their veterinary school?
How did that happen? So my first NIH grant that I got, I was in Australia and partnered with Purdue University because they were in the U.S. and it was easier to fund something from the U.S. government in the U.S. And I formed a partnership with Purdue through that grant. And when they opened up a new position, they called me and said, you know, we don't typically have a psychology PhD researcher fill this type of role, but we'd love for you to come out and interview.
And, you know, they didn't hate what I had to say in my job talk. So we were able to forge a partnership. And Purdue has had the Center for Human-Animal Bonds since the late 1980s.
So they have had... had a center focused on this for quite some time. They just haven't built in that psychology piece.
So what are the big open questions? What are you looking at? What do you hope to do going forward and well into the future?
Well into the future. Well, I hope that this field continues to grow. It is so much fun, and it feels so meaningful.
I mean, when you have people telling you that an animal saved their life and they would not be alive due to their mental health challenges, The ability to work with them to create data that shares their story through numbers, through science, it's just, it's so meaningful and it's so much fun. And I hope that I get to do that for many years to come and I hope others do as well. So that's my passion and my goal. And in terms of the specific questions, you know, my immediate next step is to continue to work with the veterans and service dogs.
So we just received a five-year NIH grant to. do a randomized clinical trial of the efficacy of service dogs for veterans and their families. So that will certainly keep us busy for a few years here.
I'm really hoping to get that rigorous data on a clinical level to share with clinicians, with doctors, with insurance companies, with policymakers. That's our initial next step. And then kind of on a broader level, I have so many open questions.
But to boil it down, I would say... I'm excited about the physiology pieces. I think it's fascinating that we can objectively track differences when someone's with an animal versus without.
You know, if we take, for example, the service dogs, we found that veterans who had a service dog had a different cortisol profile than those who didn't. So if we look at stress hormone physiology and see that it is significantly different when you have a service dog, that fascinates me. And that makes me ask questions about mechanisms. How does it work?
Why does it work? And can we pursue that further? So the physiology is one piece.
And then the second piece that I'd love to look into, which I would venture to say is less popular, is that, you know, I think there's this drive for people because they are so passionate about it to have it be black and white, to say, this is so good for us. It's great for everyone. Sign everyone up.
And what I'd love to see is more nuance to find out for who and under what circumstances this is best and how can we make it better? I don't think that you develop. If we think about drug trials as an example, you don't develop a drug, move on and say it's done. You know, you want to enhance it.
You want to reduce side effects. You want to streamline it. And I want to be able to do that with our animal assisted interventions. How can we make this the best for the human and for the animal?
And I think if we're able to, you know, dig deeper, we'll be able to have more honest conversations and make it a better process for everyone involved. Well, this has been really interesting. I've enjoyed talking to you, Dr. O'Hare.
Thank you for joining us today. It was my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at www.speakingofpsychology.org or on Apple, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And please leave us a review. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at speakingofpsychologyatapa.org. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lee Weinerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condayan.
Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.