The impact animal-assisted interventions have on mental health treatment stigma

ABSTRACT Background: Young-Adult College students are a group that frequently struggled with mental illness, especially as of late given the COVID-19 pandemic (Gopalan et al., 2022; Wang et al., 2020; Zimmerman et al., 2020). However, there still exists a stigma surrounding therapeutic intervention that could be useful to this group. In order to ameliorate this stigma, alternative and innovative therapeutic interventions should be looked into; Animal-Assisted Interventions (AAI) are one such type of intervention. By including a therapy animal within a therapy session, there is a belief that the presence of the animal might lower feelings of stigma towards therapy in general. This study seeks to understand if this is true, and also the reasons why it might be true. Methods: This mixed-methods project, guided by Stress and Coping Theory (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), utilized a sequential explanatory design to answer 5 research questions about animal-assisted interventions, therapy, stigma, and more. In total, there were 96 eligible participants who completed this study, with 42 participants in the Experimental Group with Qualitative Interview, 44 participants in the Control Group with Qualitative Interview, and 10 participants in the Qualitative-Only Group. Participants in the Experimental Group first took the Mental Help Seeking Attitudes Scale (MHSAS), then were asked to watch a video of an AAI. Participants in the Control Group also took the MHSAS, and then were asked to watch a video of a talk therapy session without an AAI component. Both groups took the MHSAS after watching the video for their group as well. Paired t-tests were used to determine if there was a significant change in feelings of stigma in both of these groups, and independent t-tests were used to determine if there was a difference in the pre-test scores and post-test scores of these groups. Thematic analysis was used to determine different themes found within the qualitative interviews. Results: There were a total of 5 themes with 21 subthemes found within the qualitative data; 16 themes were found consistently within the Experimental and Control groups, 17 themes were found consistently within the Qualitative-Only groups, and 12 themes were found consistently across both groups. When measuring stigma scores, there were significant positive changes found within the Experimental Group when using the Paired t-tests in the following categories: Effectiveness, Goodness, Healing, Empowering, Satisfying, and Desirability, suggesting an association between lowered stigma scores and the Experimental Group. No such findings were shown in the Control Group. Additionally, there were Independent T-tests done as well, with significant differences only being found within the pre-test scores of Empowerment, with the Experimental Group having significantly lowered scores compared to the Control Group. No other significant differences were shown with the Independent t-tests. Implications: Overall, there were significant differences in feelings of stigma for the Experimental Group which were not replicated in the Control Group, suggesting that the inclusion of a therapy animal is associated with lowered feelings of stigma. Additionally, important themes such as Education and Openness are discussed for further stigma reductions. Future research should focus on replicating this study with an in-person component to see if stigma is similarly reduced.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Social Work

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2023

Author dc:creator

• Cantoni, Nicole

Contributors dc:contributor

• Wegmann, Kate
• Carter-Black, Janet
• Ostler, Terry
• Sander, William

• Aai
• College Students
• Stigma
• Mhsas
• Mental Health

Statement dc:rights

• © 2023 Nicole Cantoni

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/121191

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F121191