An Animal-Assisted Therapy Intervention with Female Inmates

摘要

For many years corrections facilities have used animals as rehabilitative or therapeutic tools. Using the Outcome Questionnaire 45.2 to measure change, this study employed an experimental design to measure the effects of an animal-assisted therapy group on symptom distress, interpersonal relationships, social role performance, and overall distress of incarcerated women living in the general prison population at the Utah State Prison. Data were gathered during pretest, posttest, and at 30-day follow-up. Participants were selected using randomized systematic sampling and randomly assigned to control or experimental groups. Both the experimental and control groups used the same curriculum. The experimental group had a dog present and the control group did not. Statistical analysis indicated significant improvement for all domains measured for participants in both groups. However, there was no difference in this improvement between groups, indicating that having a dog present during the group process did not influence the improvements. Recommendations for future research are discussed.