The proportion of post -traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosis has rapidly increased to US veterans. In fact, almost 400,000 I was diagnosed between 2002-2015.
PTSD relevant CONCE Mental Health Status, Functions and Lives Quality, Unemployment, Unemployment, Health Management Costs and Real Estate are integrated into private society. And antidepressant therapy and trauma -centered psychological therapy can be done. improve In some cases, PTSD symptoms can be ambiguous for others.
PTSDs can be chronic and weak, so combining existing treatment and new processing rich Strategy. One of the promising new approaches conjugation Service and/or emotional support dogs.
Many research Dogs have shown that they have a favorable impact on mental health, quality of life, welfare, especially the PTSD symptoms and social functions of Veterans. The Service Dog can use PTSD to do a variety of tasks to support veterans, but the only function of the emotional support dog is to provide comfort. Disqualification They do not approach public buildings according to American disabled laws.
Studies have not yet evaluated the treatment and economic benefits of emotional support dogs and emotional support dogs of Veterans with PTSD.
New evidence:
In January 2023, the evaluator of the evidence -based policy resource center (partnerpeprec) Published the novel paper The title titled “The Treatment and Economic Benefits of Emotional Support Dogs for Veterans with PTSD” is the journal of the American Psychiatry Association. The authors have studied whether they provide service dogs to Veterans who are diagnosed with PTSD. We also evaluated PTSD symptoms, suicide behavior and thoughts, depression, sleep quality, anger and economic results.
methods:
The author has conducted a randomly clinical trial for recruiting 181 veterans who were diagnosed with PTSD at the three Veterans Bureau of Medical Center. Veterans have randomly received trained service dogs or emotional support dogs and lasted for 18 months.
Throughout the study, the participants called or directly evaluated the measurement of various treatment results, including the quality of health -related life. They received a questionnaire at various points after sorting, baseline, pairing and pairing.
The author used the linear mixed repeated measurement model to determine the change over time between the service dog and the emotional support group. In addition, the panel model was used to investigate whether the treatment allocation is related to the use and cost of VA health care and controlled analysis for subsequent time. Work productivity and sensitivity analysis have also been performed.
result :
The authors found that both groups helped to have service or emotional support dogs, but found that there is no significant difference in improved functions or quality of life between them. Service dogs appear to be better than emotional support views in terms of cost, health care, employment or productivity results. However, people at Service Dog Group had a significant reduction in PTSD symptoms, a better aggregation of the antidepressant, and tended to reduce suicide behavior and thought compared to the pair of emotional support nuts.
conclusion:
There were several limitations in this study. For example, the participants could not be blinded to the dog type and did not include a control group (ie, a veteran soldier without dogs) because it created an ethical and analytical challenge. The findings may not be generalized for other population (eg non -vetain).
This study suggests that pairs of Veterans with PTSD and service or emotional support dogs can complement existing evidence -based treatment, increase the level of treatment, and reduce PTSD symptoms. In the future research, service or emotional support dogs must directly reduce PTSD symptoms or improve treatment agreements or compliance to investigate the mechanisms that affect patient functions.
PEPREC is a team of health economists, public health research institutes and policy analysts who participate in policy admissions to improve the lives of veterans through advanced quantitative methods that are mostly funded by QUERI in the Veterans Health Bureau.
