Written by Stephany Mandujano, Staff Writer
We as students face stressful situations daily, whether it be an important math test coming up or having to turn in multiple missing assignments before the end of the week. The stress that students face can sometimes be immense, especially when you throw Advanced Placement courses, honors classes, extracurricular activities, and jobs into the mix.
That’s why in addition to having a school psychologist and other support personnel, we should also think about allowing therapy animals at school since their presence can prove to have many benefits that would decrease stress in students.
The purpose of therapy animals is to provide love, comfort, and affection to people in various institutions, a few being hospitals, nursing homes, and schools. They are different than service animals who are trained to perform specific acts and support people with disabilities. However, therapy animals still manage to make a noticeable and positive impact on the lives of the people they visit.
Petting a dog for even a few minutes can positively affect our brain, increasing oxytocin levels and reducing the stress hormone cortisol, according to the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, an organization that gives teachers the resources to excel in teaching and learning to make sure that students are safe.
Such a decline in stress-inducing chemicals and hormones is important since it is what leads to the decrease of some common health problems. The American Institute of Stress, a non-pro t organization that shares information on stress, states that by decreasing our stress levels, we can reduce headaches, muscle tension, fatigue, stomach aches, insomnia, and other stress-related ailments. Lower stress levels also decrease the risk of having a stroke or a heart attack, as well as lessen the time it takes for your body to recover from sickness or injuries.
The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), an organization dedicated to contributing to the discovery of new information, found that blood pressure and heart rates of undergraduates when they interacted with a dog visually, tactfully or verbally were highest when the students spoke to the experimenter and were lowest when they pet the dog.
The NCBI also discovered in another study that 20 minutes of silent rest didn’t reduce serum and salivary cortisol as much as petting a therapy dog for five minutes did.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported research by J. Lloyd and R. Sorin that revealed numerous benefits to having a therapy dog in school including increased school attendance, gains in confidence, and decreases in learner anxiety behaviors resulting in improved learning outcomes, such as increased reading and writing levels, improved motivation, and enhanced relationships with peers and teachers.
However, even though there are many positives of having therapy dogs in school, there are also some concerns about allergies or fear of animals. That is a problem that can be solved by simply creating a set schedule of when and where the dog is available for students or by having teachers send out permission slips to parents to be able to request a visit to their classrooms by a therapy animal.
Animal therapy can prove to be a great support for stressed or overwhelmed students, helping them improve their mental health and consequently having a positive impact on their learning as well as physical health. So as of now, we can only wait and see if this helpful suggestion will be implemented in our school as well.