The Effects of a Dog-Assisted Intervention on the symptoms of PTSD

Psychological trauma and the resulting Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) inflicted while serving in the military, can have severe and lasting emotional, physiological and chemical/hormonal consequences impacting quality of life sometimes leading to disease and suicide. PTSD impacts veterans disproportionately and new treatments that are evidenced-based, cost-effective and readily accessible are desperately needed to treat the growing number of men and women suffering from PTSD. The use of animals as interventions to treat veterans suffering from PTSD holds promise to provide for the wide range of psychological and physiologic sequelae of PTSD while at the same time offering an intervention that is readily accessible and suitable to providing relief from symptoms to a broad range of veterans across genders, race, cultures and age ranges. The literature was reviewed and analyzed to examine the evidence of how animals and specifically dogs provide relief from the debilitating symptoms of PTSD supporting the utilization of dogs for treating veterans suffering from trauma. Results were expanded upon and in-line with existing studies demonstrating the distinctive role dogs possess as companions, stress relievers and healers for persons experiencing symptoms of PTSD. The purpose of this research study is to gather evidence for the inclusion of dogs as interventions to treat the broad cluster symptoms of PTSD through dog adoption programs.