3 Jan 2020
Results, from analysed data on more than 68,000 adults, showed dog owners had a lower rate of chronic mental illness than non-owners, but these benefits were only apparent in “companioned” owners.
John Bonner
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Owning a dog can be beneficial for the mental health of owners – but researchers have found the effects may vary according to their marital status.
Emmanuel Stamatakis, of The University of Sydney School of Public Health, offered an insight into the complex interactions between dog ownership and psychological well-being in the largest study in this field, published in the journal Anthrozoös.
His team analysed data on more than 68,000 adults gathered through the Health Survey for England (HSE), a cross-sectional study of English residents carried out annually to monitor health trends in the nation’s adult population.
Because of its size and comprehensiveness, the database has become a valuable resource for researchers across the globe looking at physical and mental health issues in a representative sample of residents in an advanced economy.
The study collected pooled datasets from six years of the HSE and looked at differences between the 15,000 respondents – about a quarter of the sample – who reported living in a household with one or more dogs, and the rest.
Prof Stamatakis and his team were looking for correlations between dog ownership and marital status – two factors that previous, much smaller studies have shown can affect mental health outcomes, but the evidence so far was both incomplete and contradictory.
Their results showed people living with a canine housemate had a significantly lower rate of chronic mental illness than non-owners, but these benefits were only apparent in those owners who were “companioned” (married, partnered or cohabiting) and not in those dog owners living alone.
In contrast, dog ownership appeared to have a detrimental effect on the incidence of temporary mental health problems in singletons.
The report said: “We found that dog ownership was associated with an increased risk of reporting short-term psychological distress among solitary participants.”
Prof Stamatakis and his colleagues acknowledged the problems resulting from the cross-sectional nature of the HSE data, in that it offered only a snapshot of the mental health issues under investigation.
