Pets and Massage Therapy Can Reduce Anxiety

 

Article compiled from items written by G. Cooper in “The Clinician’s Digest” in Psychotherapy Network magazine, adapted and reprinted with permission, copyright,Psychotherapy Networker, Inc.

If you want to reduce stress in your life, consider replacing your spouse with a pet. Such is the finding of an unusual study reported in the September, 2002 issue of Psychosomatic Medicine.

 

For the study, researchers selected 120 couples, half of whom had no pet and half of whom owned a cat or dog. They separated the subjects into four groups and asked them to perform a rapid series of subtraction problems. After a brief recovery period, the subjects were instructed to immerse their hands in a container of ice water for two minutes. One group performed these tasks while the family pet roamed freely about the room, Two other groups went about the tasks with a spouse or friend seated nearby. The fourth group worked alone. Throughout the process, researchers monitored the subjects’ heart rate and blood pressure.

Individuals in the first group showed the least physical reactions to stress and the fastest recoveries. In addition, the average systolic blood pressure of subjects who did the math tests with their spouses nearby was 35 points higher than that of subjects who did the tests in the presence of a pet. Under some conditions, the presence of a spouse or friend was more soothing to pet owners than being alone. But human companionship never proved as comforting as the pet.

The study, led by psychologist Karen Allen of the State University of New York, Buffalo, found that the presence of a pet not only reduces acute stress but lowers baseline anxiety. Even before the math and ice water ordeals, those who owned pets had lower heartbeats and blood pressures than those who didn’t.

The study provides no answer for the most persistent and contentious debate among dog and cat owners. When it comes to reducing stress, neither pet was better than the other.

Allen’s study was criticized for possible confusing association with causality. Maybe, some people argued, the kinds of people who own pets are less prone to stress already. But a later study by Allen in the December, 2003 Current Directions in Psychological Science, knocks down that hypothesis. Allen chose 48 stockbrokers who lived alone, described their jobs as “extremely stressful,” and were scheduled to begin taking medication for high blood pressure. None had owned pets in the last five years. Allen randomly selected half of them to receive a cat or dog from an animal shelter. After the stockbrokers had settled in with their pets ad begun taking their medications, Allen gave them the stressful math test and measured their cardiovascular responses before and after. The heartbeat and blood pressure of the new pet owners rose only half as much as the stockbrokers without pets.

Unlike in other pet studies, during the stress test the pets weren’t by the subjects’ sides, available for petting, cuddling, or solace. Thus, it’s the presence of pets in people’s lives, not necessarily their presence in the room, their warm breath, or their touch, which seems to diminish pet owners’ reactions to stress.

Pets aren’t the only non-medicinal, non-talk therapy treatment for anxiety. A metanalysis of more than 25 massage therapy studies of anxiety and depression, in the January, 2004 Psychological Bulletin finds that massage therapy is roughly as effective as psychotherapy.

The analysis, by Christopher Moyer, James Rounds, and James Hannum, of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, looked at randomized studies that included control groups. They found that one session of massage therapy reduced depression and anxiety for as much as several weeks after the treatment ended. Multiple sessions worked even better. While one would expect massage to reduce temporary anxiety, when compared to control groups, people with endemic anxiety were more than 77 percent more likely to improve than the controls. The analysis points out that psychotherapy is usually 79 percent more likely to improve depression when compared to control groups.

Why does massage therapy work? The researchers found no conclusive support for any of the usual explanations—that it invigorates the nervous system, influences body chemistry, relieves aches and pains, or promotes restorative sleep. Interestingly, they do find mild support for the theory that psychotherapy and massage may share a few healing components: clients come in with positive expectations for treatment, the therapist expresses a positive, warm regard for the client, and there’s a positive alignment between client and therapist.

Moyer, Rounds and Hannum call for more research to look more closely at all the variables of massage therapy—length and number of sessions, type of massage therapy, and the kinds of verbal communication between the massage therapist and client. They also call for more comparison studies with psychotherapy. Because massage therapy may also induce physical changes, they speculate that the combination of massage therapy and psychotherapy may be more potent than either alone.

 

References:

Allen, Karen (2003). “Are pets a healthy pleasure? The influence of pets on blood pressure,” Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12 (6), 236-239

Allen, Karen; Blaskovich, Jim; and Mendes, Wendy (2002). “Cardiovascular reactivity and the presence of pets, friends, and spouses: The truth about cats and dogs,” Psychosomatic Medicine, 64 (5), 727-739. Retrieved from. https://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/cgi/content/full/64/5/727

Moyer, Christopher A; Rounds, James; Hannum, James (2003). “A meta-analysis of massage therapy research,” Psychological Bulletin, 130 (1), 3-18.

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