Canine Comfort: The Protective Effects of Dog Ownership and Support for Victimized Adolescents

ABSTRACT

Despite anecdotal and empirical evidence that pets are beneficial for mental health, little is understood about these relationships in adolescents. This study examined the moderating effect of family dog ownership and perceived dog support on the relationship between social victimization and mental health complaints in adolescents. Adolescents (n = 246; 106 boys, 140 girls) and their parents completed measures of peer victimization and mental health complaints. Additionally, adolescents provided information about the number and type of pets in the home. A total of 131 lived with a dog; 105 chose a dog as their favorite pet. Adolescents who lived with a pet completed a measure of perceived support from their favorite animal. Living with a family dog moderated the influences of social victimization on mental health problems, especially internalizing problems, such that the relationship between victimization and mental health problems was weaker for those living with a dog. Perceived dog support further moderated the relationship between victimization and total problems, anxious/depression, thought problems, attention problems, and aggressive behavior, such that the magnitude of the relationship between victimization and these variables was weaker when more dog support was perceived. Results suggest that perceived support can be derived from a family pet and may buffer against the negative influence of peer victimization.

KEYWORDS:

• Dog ownership
• human–animal interaction
• peer victimization
• psychological health

Acknowledgements

The authors thank all the adolescents and parents who participated in the larger study on peer relationships and health outcomes. Additionally, the authors thank Cinders, Lucy, Gabby, Coco, Charlie, Ducky, Baron, Minnie, and KK for being the inspiration for this work and providing unconditional support to the authors of this paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The measure of pet support was created by the authors and derived from several previously used scales. In particular, we examined human support scales and adapted items to represent pet support. The items are available in online supplemental file 1.

2 No significant relationships were found between somatic complaints and any other variables when parent and child scores were combined, nor when they were analyzed separately.

3 Models with physical victimization as the predictor and social victimization as the covariate were run for completeness. As predicted, only social victimization predicted outcomes.

4 We predicted a one-tailed test for the interaction (i.e., buffering influence of perceived support) so it was significant at p < 0.035, one-tailed.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the Jerry M. Lewis, M.D., Mental Health Research Foundations, Inc.