The mental well being of students in schools and colleges have been shown to improve dramatically with a “canine teaching assistant” around.
More and more universities around the world are “recruiting” dogs on to their campus as studies have shown that this helps students significantly in dealing with anxiety and stress.
While dogs have shown to be a highly effective companion for patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorders, their effectiveness in the campus had not been studied scientifically till now.
Washington State University researcher, Dr. Patricia Pendry, studied more than three hundred students by allowing them to spend an hour a week with dogs. Students who ran the risk of being academic failures or were considering dropping out due to the stress is reported to have become more relaxed and therefore concentrate more in their lessons.
Dr. Pendry added, “Students most at risk, such as those with mental health issues, showed the most benefit.”
Canine teaching assistants in the UK
Earlier this year, the University of Middlesex had taken the innovative measure of recruiting dogs onto their staff to help lessen the feeling of loneliness in students. These “recruits” were issued staff cards even!
Sir Anthony Seldon, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, has always advocated the need for schools to pay more attention to the mental wellbeing of students.
In a speech given by him earlier in the year, he said:
“The quickest and biggest hit that we can make to improve mental health in our schools is to have at least one dog in every single school in the country,”
There have been previous studies which showed a reduction in stress hormones while petting animals. But Prof Nancy Gee of the State University of New York points out that we still do not know the mechanism behind this connection between dogs-on-campus and the well being of students.
Absence of proof need not be proof of absence. As long as there is no harm done, the practice of having “canine teaching assistants” on campus seems to be a perfect one.
