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The college is stressful. Students have courses, badignments and exams. But they also often have work, bills to pay and many other common pressures in modern life.
Many universities have set up "Help Your Stress" programs, where students can enter and chat with cats and / or dogs to ease tensions.
Scientists at Washington State University have recently shown that in addition to improving the mood of students, these programs can actually become "under the skin" and have physiological benefits.
"Only 10 minutes can have a significant impact," said Patricia Pendry, Associate Professor in the WSU Human Development Department. "The students in our study who interacted with cats and dogs had a significant reduction in cortisol, a major stress hormone."
Pendry published these results with Jaymie Vandagriff, a WSU graduate student, last month in AERA Open, an open access journal published by the American Educational Research Association.
This is the first study to demonstrate a reduction in students' cortisol levels during a real intervention rather than in the laboratory.
The study was conducted among 249 students randomly divided into four groups. The first group had a practical small group interaction with cats and dogs for 10 minutes. They could play with the animals, play with them, and usually go out with them as they wished.
To compare the effects of different exposures in animals, the second group observed that other people were stroking the animals while they were waiting their turn. The third group viewed a slide show of the same animals available at the intervention, while the fourth group was placed on a waiting list.
These students waited their turn quietly for 10 minutes without their phone, reading material or other stimulus, but were told that they were soon going to experience an interaction with the animals.
Several samples of salivary cortisol were collected from each participant, starting in the morning upon waking. Once all the data from the various samples were badyzed, the students who interacted directly with the pets showed significantly less cortisol in their saliva after the interaction. These results were found even considering that some students may have had very high or low levels in the beginning.
"We already knew that students enjoyed interacting with animals and that it helped them to experience more positive emotions," said Pendry. "What we wanted to know, was if this exposure would help students reduce their stress in a less subjective way." And that's exciting, because reducing stress hormones can, over time , have beneficial effects on physical and mental health. "
Today, Pendry and his team are continuing their work examining the impact of a four-week animal-badisted stress prevention program. Preliminary results are very positive, with a follow-up study showing that the results of the recently published work resist.
They hope to publish the final results of this work in the near future.
Source of the story:
Material provided by University of Washington State. Note: Content can be changed for style and length.
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