Effects of service dogs on children with ASD’s symptoms and parents’ well-being: On the importance of considering those effects with a more systemic perspective

Abstract

The integration of a service dog can have numerous benefits for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, although integration takes place within a family, little is known about the dynamics of these benefits on the family microsystem. Thus, the aim of our study was to propose a more systemic perspective, not only by investigating the benefits of SD integration, but also by exploring the relationships between improvements in children with ASD, parents’ well-being, parenting strategies and the quality of the child-dog relationship. Twenty parent-child with ASD dyads were followed before, as well as 3 and 6 months after service dog integration. At each stage, parents completed an online survey which included: the Autism Behavior Inventory (ABI-S), the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-Y), the Parenting Stress Index Short Version (PSI-SF), the Monash Dog Owner Relationship Scale (MDORS) and the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ). First, repeated measure one-way ANOVAs revealed that both children’s ASD symptoms and parents’ anxiety decreased significantly after service dog integration. Additionally, Spearman correlations revealed that the more ASD symptoms decreased, the more parent’s anxiety and parenting stress also decreased. Second, the quality of the child-dog relationship appeared to contribute to those benefits on both children’s ASD symptoms and parents’ well-being. Interestingly, parenting strategies seemed to adapt according to these benefits and to the quality of the child-dog relationship. Through a more systemic perspective, this study highlighted that the integration of a service dog involved reciprocal and dynamic effects for children with ASD and their parents, and shed new light on the processes that may underlie the effects of a service dog for children with ASD.

Animal-assisted interventions for military families: a systematic review

“…Future studies should, for example, consider associations between family member outcomes and plan for analyses capable of identifying key predictors at both the individual and the dyad level. Similar methodology has, for example, been incorporated into a study of children with service dogs for autism and their families, providing a possible template for exploring the quantitative influence of human-animal interactions within family systems [e.g., ( 48 )]. Additionally, instead of being an add-on to studies focused primarily on veterans, it is important for studies to be designed and powered to specifically study family-focused interventions, considering the military family as a whole unit.…”