Therapy dog child adhd

ADHD: Could dogs be the answer? | UCI Health

February 19, 2019 | UCI Health

UCI Health child development specialist Sabrina E.B. Schuck — long concerned about the lack of treatments for children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) — decided to seek therapies besides medications to calm and help them focus.

In a first-of-its-kind randomized trial, Schuck and her colleagues discovered that therapy dogs are effective in reducing some of the symptoms of ADHD in children. At least 5 percent of U.S. children are diagnosed with ADHD.

Schuck, who holds a doctorate in education and a master’s degree in clinical psychology, is an assistant professor of pediatrics and executive director of the UCI Health Child Development Center.

Beyond ADHD, her research interests include the human-animal bond and school-based interventions. Her team’s research was recently published in the American Psychological Association’s Society of Counseling Psychology’s Human-Animal Interaction Bulletin.

What made you think therapy dogs could help children with ADHD?

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence about the effectiveness of therapy dogs. Our founding school program director brought a therapy dog, Teddy, to school every day. Others have studied child development and the human-animal bond, but until recently, there were no large or randomized and controlled trials.

Adapting those studies to ADHD work done here at UCI over the past two decades, we proposed a complex clinical trial to see if animals like Teddy make a difference for these children.

Whom did you study and how did the study work?

Over five years, we looked at seven cohorts of 12 children — a total of 88, ages 7 to 9 — who’d been diagnosed with ADHD. None had started medication. All received “dog-themed” psychosocial skills-based training and coaching on how to care for and be safe around a dog. Their parents also received behavioral training. But only half the children actually worked with the dogs.

How did the children interact with the dogs?

During two weekly sessions, kids had semi-structured time to bond with the dogs. They rotated among separate activity stations, throwing a ball or Frisbee, grooming the dogs, working with them on agility or other activities. Children then participated in didactic lessons to build social skills. Whenever the kids contributed to the sessions, they were rewarded by being able to sit or lie down next to the dog. They also wrote letters and stories to the dogs, and on Saturdays they practiced dog-training techniques.

Didn’t the dogs distract the children?

On the contrary, it takes a lot to engage kids who are hyperactive when doing activities they don’t necessarily prefer. Working with the dogs seems to motivate children to participate in tasks they would otherwise avoid.

How long did the study last?

Each cohort was studied for 12 weeks of treatment, then again six weeks later. For the first nine weeks, the groups with therapy dogs learned how to train the animals. In the last three weeks, the kids created their own lesson plans to teach basics like sit, stay and come. Then they tried to train puppies, a task that requires considerable patience and self-control.

What did your study find?

Children who interacted with the dogs experienced a reduction in inattention and improvements in social skills and self-esteem when compared to the groups without dogs. There was no effect, however, on hyperactivity and impulsivity. We saw the same results in a follow-up measurement six weeks after the interaction with the dogs ended. These findings are important because hyperactivity and impulsivity tend to decline with age, while problems with attention tend to persist through life and are the most challenging to treat.

Can this intervention take the place of medication?

I would never say that kids always need medicine or don’t need it. Medications are very effective at reducing symptoms for many children with ADHD. But we also need to learn who benefits from animal-assisted interventions and how we can measure its effectiveness with or without medicine.

What’s next for the program?

We want to understand who benefits from these strategies most and why. We also want to examine how to feasibly implement animal-assisted interventions, particularly in schools, to complement or provide alternatives to other therapies we know work.

Our main goal is to see how we can safely and effectively implement this program to help motivate children to learn and participate in school.

What surprised you about this study?

This project was so much fun. I loved seeing kids lined up at the school gate right on time because they couldn’t wait to get in to start therapy. The children in the dog groups were always on time.

Therapy Dogs Benefit Those With ADHD · The Wildest

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by Karen B. London, PhD and Hilary Weaver

Updated February 27, 2023

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In recent years, with the help of TikTok and a general ease of the stigma around mental health, we are finally talking about Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The days of feeling like the odd one out in the classroom or being called hurtful (and uncreative!) names like “space case” are hopefully behind us as disability advocates continue to educate schools and workplaces on accommodating their neurodiverse students and colleagues. Plus — bonus: It turns out dogs can support the needs of folks with ADHD.

Concerned about the lack of treatment for those living with ADHD, researchers studied the positive effects of therapy dogs on children with the disorder. Although therapy dogs have been used to help kids with ADHD for a long time, this study is the first randomized experiment to document the effects people have been anecdotally reporting for years. Here’s what researchers learned about how therapy dogs effectively reduce symptoms of this disorder in children.

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How do therapy dogs help children with ADHD?

Catecholamines are important in stress responses. Children with ADHD may suffer from abnormal physiological factors in the catecholamine system, especially dopamine receptors and transporters, and the genes that are necessary to convert it to norepinephrine. The result of these abnormalities is decreased motivation and reduced emotions, which can lead to inattention and disinterest in social interactions as well as in the learning process.

If this “Motivational Hypothesis” is true, then interacting with dogs may help these kids by heightening their arousal and emotional states and leading to increased attention and interest in the environment in which therapy takes place. It’s also possible that the opportunity to interact with a therapy dog motivates children to comply with the requirements of therapy and to engage with the therapist.

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Dogs increase the odds of improvement.

The kids in the study were all seven to nine years old and none of them had ever taken medication for ADHD. All of the kids were treated according to long-established best practices in the field of psychosocial intervention. Half the kids were randomly assigned to a group that also received Canine Assisted Intervention (CAI) — treated with a therapy dog. They were able to interact twice weekly with therapy dogs, reading to them and teaching them new behaviors. The kids who did not work with a therapy dog read to realistic dog puppets and taught other children specific skills.

Children in both groups showed improvement in their ADHD symptoms, but standard psychosocial intervention combined with therapy-dog work was more effective than psychosocial intervention alone. Specifically, the kids who interacted with therapy dogs had greater improvement in social skills and attention than kids whose treatment did not include dogs. They also had fewer behavior problems than the kids receiving standard treatment without dogs, and they showed positive improvements earlier in the study than the group of kids who did not interact with dogs. There were no differences found between the groups in terms of their hyperactivity and impulsivity.

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The future of ADHD treatment options.

There is a big push to develop and study new therapies to treat ADHD that do not involve medication. Many parents are hesitant to use medication with their children and typically only use it for one to three years. There is a strong possibility that many parents will be more open to therapy dog work than to using a medication, so treatments with dogs could result in higher long-term compliance.

This study showed that therapy with dogs improved some symptoms of ADHD but not others, so it is likely that multiple treatment types are needed to target the full range of symptoms. There is still much to learn about the best way to incorporate therapy dogs into the treatment of kids with ADHD, but — thankfully — the future of neurodiversity looks a lot brighter (and cuter) with these furry pals in the mix.

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Karen B. London, PhD

Karen B. London, Ph.D., is a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist and Certified Professional Dog Trainer who specializes in working with dogs with serious behavioral issues, including aggression, and has also trained other animals including cats, birds, snakes, and insects. She writes the animal column for the Arizona Daily Sun and is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Northern Arizona University. She is the author of six books about training and behavior, including her most recent, Treat Everyone Like a Dog: How a Dog Trainer’s World View Can Improve Your Life.

Hilary Weaver

Hilary Weaver is the senior editor at The Wildest. She has previously been an editor at The Spruce Pets, ELLE, and The Cut. She was a staff writer at Vanity Fair for nearly three years, and her work has been featured in Esquire, Refinery 29, BuzzFeed, Parade, and more. She lives with her herding pups, Georgie and Charlie, in New England.

Therapy dogs go to the rescue of children

The completely new reality that has taken shape in a very short period of time due to the pandemic has led to an increase in the statistics on the number of mental health complaints. Children were also under attack. In the beginning, isolation may have seemed like an extended vacation and rejoiced at the lack of school, but then it quickly turned into a depressing reality full of despondency and loneliness. To cope with accumulated stress and move forward, many parents are looking for ways to support their children. However, there are situations when online resources on the topic and the abilities of the parents themselves are simply not enough, and then experts in helping practices come to the rescue.

Editorial Afisha.London spoke with child psychologist Sofia Abehassera, who practices dog therapy in London e , and asked her professional support for children to comment on her current situation.

The problem of the impact of gadget abuse on the mental health of children has occupied the thoughts of parents and specialists for many years, but in 2020 it has reached a completely new level. Gadgets have not only become one of the few entertainments available in isolation, but have become a major part of the learning process, so that it is now almost impossible for even the youngest members of society to avoid them. In addition, new technologies such as virtual reality have begun to slowly seep into everyday life and increase the influence of already familiar computers, set-top boxes, phones and tablets. Hyperexcitability and attention problems - the main symptoms of frequent use of gadgets - in turn are aggravated by the significant influence of social networks.

Even young children began to create accounts on TikTok (before the introduction of new restrictions on this network) and YouTube. Interestingly, parents themselves sometimes push their children to actively use social networks, often unconsciously. Entertaining videos with dancing family members, various challenges, animals and young bloggers talking about makeup or science experiments are very popular now. Many parents encourage the creation of such content, telling themselves that it is perfectly acceptable and even necessary for the creative development of children. As a result, social networks cause addiction at an early age. All this contributes to the development of unhealthy self-image and self-esteem problems, which adults also suffer from, but it is twice as difficult for children to cope with this.

: Photo: Annie Spratt/Unsplash

: Photo: stem.T4L/Unsplash

The pandemic has left many children isolated from the world they should be actively exploring. This left a special imprint on their well-being, in some cases leading to increased levels of stress and anxiety, depression, panic attacks, sleep and eating disorders. But the “usual” stressful circumstances during the pandemic have not gone away: for example, disagreements in the family and even the divorce of parents or moving to another country, which entails a change in language and environment. All these issues require special attention, supervision and assistance, preferably from specialists in the helping professions.

Now there is a lot of scientific evidence that our physical health is directly related to mental health and that a person can be unable to function if he has any psychological problems. Indeed, if mental health problems are allowed to take their course, especially in a child, the consequences can have a strong impact on both school and life in general. Until the child is able to analyze problems and critically approach the situation on his own, he must be supported by adults who can help solidify the correct patterns necessary for further development. Today, one of the most gentle but effective ways to support children is dog therapy, or canistherapy. The child may not even feel that he is at a session with a doctor, because with him in the room there will be friendly dogs who are happy with any interaction. We asked Sophia about where canistherapy came from and what it consists of.

A bit of history: from soldiers to Freud

Canistherapy is based on scientific evidence that interaction with dogs has a beneficial effect on mental health and well-being. In the presence of a dog, a person relaxes, experiences positive emotions, joy, satisfaction, tenderness and calmness. The earliest scientific references to this therapy date back to the 18th century, when hospitals and psychiatric hospitals kept dogs on their territories to help patients relax and provide them with some kind of socialization. Dogs have also been used to rehabilitate soldiers returning from war with post-traumatic stress disorder, which has a beneficial effect on their mental health.

: Sigmund Freud and his Chow Chow.

: Freud with a chow chow named Yofi.

Already in the 19th and 20th centuries. canistherapy began to be studied from a medical and chemical point of view. Scientists have found that interaction with a dog leads to the production of certain hormones: endorphins, serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin, which leads to an improvement in mood. Even Sigmund Freud himself used his chow dogs in psychoanalytic sessions, noting that this approach made patients more open to dialogue and receptive to psychoanalysis. But the founding father of modern canistherapy is American child psychiatrist Boris Levinson, whose dog once attracted the attention of an introverted child with an autism spectrum disorder and helped him make contact with a doctor. Subsequently, Levinson used his dog in therapy and has seen amazing results when working with children with developmental delays, behavioral disorders, autism and other mental health problems.

Canistherapy has come a long way since then. Today it is widely used in many countries in both psychological counseling and mental health care. This type of therapy has received the greatest distribution in the USA; in the UK, there are still few such specialists, but both here and in Russia, canistherapy is developing steadily.

How is canistherapy carried out and what is its meaning?

Interaction with an animal is only an auxiliary element of therapy, and the work of the psychologist or psychotherapist himself is of paramount importance. Now canistherapy is more often used for children, as experiments and statistics have shown that it is more effective for them. The fact is that the very process of classical therapy may seem incomprehensible to children, even frightening, and the animal helps specialists to establish contact with them. There are many different types of therapy involving animals (zootherapy), including cats, dolphins and rabbits, but dogs occupy a key position. The presence of dogs is good for children: it helps to relax, builds confidence and increases confidence and self-esteem. All this happens due to the fact that these animals are able to show unconditional interest and love, to fully accept a person.

During the therapy session, the child can pet the dog to feel calmer and more confident, or, for example, talk to it. “It is often difficult for children to start a conversation with an adult, but it is easy to start telling a dog something, because they perceive it at their level as a friend,” Sophia explains. So, reading for dogs is a popular exercise for children with learning problems, such as dyslexia (reading disorder). Children understand that the dog will not judge them, and therefore it is not ashamed and fearless in front of it; besides, animals feel when they are told something, and listen with interest. As practice shows, reading for dogs is a very effective method to overcome children's shyness, strengthen self-confidence and instill in a child the skill of public speaking.

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Who can benefit from canistherapy?

Canistherapy is used to address a wide range of problems: for example, it has shown excellent results with children suffering from anxiety disorders and phobias, and it is often used in the treatment of post-traumatic disorders. Sophia's experience has shown that dog therapy works great for children who are experiencing stress, loss of a loved one, or tense family situations, such as a parent's divorce. Canistherapy also helps children who are faced with self-doubt and problems with socialization, as well as experiencing difficulties in communicating with peers. Interaction with a dog helps children to believe in themselves, as the animal broadcasts unconditional acceptance of the child and admiration for any of his actions.

The Pekingese Sofia works with are Don, Fifi and Bonita.

This therapy is also effective for children with autism spectrum disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). With traditional methods of therapy, the difficulty of working with such children is that it is not so easy for the specialist to establish contact with the child and get his attention, and for children, in turn, it is difficult to open up and concentrate. In such cases, the dog serves as a guide - a kind of connecting link between the therapist and the child. The results of therapy, of course, depend on the initial problem, but in general, socialization skills and concentration improve, self-esteem and self-confidence increase, speech and reading skills develop, stress decreases and, as a result, sleep improves.

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Dogs-therapists-these are not just dogs

, training dogs are used for therapy: they should be listened and contact. And dogs that work with children must love them and be able to interact with them. Not all dogs fall under these criteria, but there is no particular breed that is more suitable for therapy than others. For example, Sophia works with Pekingese, who are both her pets and assistants at work. “I have always loved this breed, they have been living with me for many years as full-fledged members of my family. They are very friendly, get along well with children and love attention. In addition, fluffy little dogs invariably cause delight and tenderness in children and adults! Sofia says.

And Sofia once again became convinced of the positive influence of animals on human well-being while writing her master's thesis in psychology in the British capital, where she moved from Moscow 8 years ago. Her own research has shown that people who live with animals tend to have more balanced levels of stress and anxiety, and are also less prone to depression. “I myself have always had animals - cats and dogs, and I knew that their presence in my life relieves stress and has a beneficial effect on me,” Sophia recalls. By the way, it was this dissertation that led our heroine to canistherapy, and in her current practice she combined her love for animals, children and psychology, developing her own approach to therapy.

What to read to children under 7 if Chukovsky is no longer happy

small community, and this is not only because its sessions can be in both English and Russian. The fact is that she combines canistherapy with other types of therapy in order to achieve optimal results and adapt to the needs of a particular patient. “I use a holistic approach to therapy – a combination of traditional CBT, interaction with dogs, and elements of art therapy and play therapy,” Sofia says. - Depending on the age of the child, I select certain exercises, games and tasks, and with older children, I use talking therapy to a greater extent. Working with children, I noticed that it is often difficult for them to formulate thoughts and express emotions in words, so various creative tasks appeared in my practice. And, of course, the therapeutic process is facilitated by interaction with dogs.”

One of Sophia's clients has been suffering from an anxiety disorder for a long time, but isolation, disruption of her daily routine and lack of communication with her peers led to a deterioration in the condition and panic attacks. After just a few sessions of therapy, changes appeared: the girl's sleep returned to normal and her general mood improved. Canistherapy sessions, especially with elements of art and play therapy, can become a new pleasant pastime for a child, diversify his life and, most importantly, improve his well-being and increase stress resistance.

For more information on dog therapy, visit Sofia Abehasser's website: Dog Therapy London. Also visit her Instagram and Facebook.

Talked Liya Shapiro

Photo on the cover: Paul Barton/Getty Images

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ETU "LETI" scientists taught AI to detect the degree of hyperactivity in dogs from video recordings behavior captured on video.

10/05/2021 2064

Researchers from St. Petersburg Electrotechnical University "LETI" together with scientists from the University of Haifa (Israel) and the University of Newcastle (Great Britain) have developed a machine learning model to determine the severity of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in dogs based on the analysis of their behavior, recorded on video.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a mental disorder that can manifest itself in humans and animals from an early age. Among the symptoms of the syndrome, depending on the degree of its severity, difficulties in concentrating attention, perceiving information, hyperactivity and poorly controlled impulsivity are usually distinguished. Although ADHD is now treatable and not considered a disease in many parts of the world, people and animals affected by the syndrome can be dangerous to themselves and others.

Previously, scientists from St. Petersburg Electrotechnical University "LETI", together with researchers from Israel, Great Britain and France, trained a neural network model to determine whether dogs have ADHD or not from video recordings. The new algorithm makes it possible to obtain a more accurate assessment of the condition of a sick animal. The research results are published in the scientific journal Animals.

“We came up with a new method for classifying hyperactive states in dogs based on video analysis. Now our machine learning model is can not only detect ADHD, but also determine the degree of its manifestation with high accuracy. This is important for more effective treatment of the disease ", - says the project manager, Associate Professor of the Department of Automation and Control Processes of St. Petersburg Electrotechnical University "LETI" Dmitry Ilyich Kaplun .

Scientists used video recordings from veterinary clinics that recorded the activity of dogs with ADHD to train a neural network model. The experiments took place in a room specially marked out according to the coordinate system. Thanks to this, the trajectories of the movement of dogs in various situations were automatically lined up. Then, based on the collected statistics, artificial intelligence identified patterns and made a conclusion about the degree of hyperactivity of the animal.

“Our solution can be used in rapidly developing telemedicine, including veterinary medicine.
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Therapy dog child adhd

ADHD: Could dogs be the answer? | UCI Health

February 19, 2019 | UCI Health

What made you think therapy dogs could help children with ADHD?

Whom did you study and how did the study work?

How did the children interact with the dogs?

Didn’t the dogs distract the children?

How long did the study last?

What did your study find?

Can this intervention take the place of medication?

What’s next for the program?

What surprised you about this study?

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Therapy dogs go to the rescue of children

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ETU "LETI" scientists taught AI to detect the degree of hyperactivity in dogs from video recordings behavior captured on video.