Effects of Dog-assisted Therapy in Anxiety Symptoms of Female Adolescents With Eating Disorders: A Controlled Trial

Abstract

Background: Eating disorders are a cluster of challenging psychiatric and medical conditions that constitute a major problem in adolescents and young adults. Animal-assisted interventions are currently a promising complementary therapy with great development in the hospital field.

Methods: The study is a non-randomized clinical trial designed with two groups under assessment. The first group consisted of 15 female patients at a Day Hospital diagnosed with eating disorders who received animal-assisted therapy. The second group had a sample of 15 patients from the same hospital with similar diagnoses and matched characteristics to the intervention group. Anxiety, depression, eating symptoms, grip strength, and health-related quality of life were analyzed both previously and after the intervention.

Results: ANOVA results showed a significant between-group reduction in the state anxiety levels (p = 0.011, ηp² = 0.211), with a significant decrease in the intervention group (p = 0.003). Interpersonal distrust (p = 0.042) and fear of maturity (p = 0.012) subscales in the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI2) questionnaire had larger improvement when comparing pre- and post-measures in the intervention group. A similar trend was observed for the rest of the eating symptoms subscales and grip strength in the group treated with the animal-assisted intervention.

Conclusion: This study suggests that dog-assisted therapy may be an effective complementary intervention for reducing state anxiety in adolescents with eating disorders. Given the role of anxiety in the maintenance of anorexia nervosa, targeting this symptom could have therapeutic benefits. Additionally, improvements in interpersonal distrust and maturity fears were observed, highlighting the potential impact of animal-assisted therapy on specific psychological factors associated with eating disorders. These findings support the inclusion of dog-assisted interventions as part of multidisciplinary treatment approaches, although further research with larger samples is needed to confirm these effects.

Clinical trial registration: clinicaltrials.gov (NCT04869423).