Construct Validity of Animal-Assisted Therapy and Activities: How Important Is the Animal in AAT?

TLDR

Animal‑assisted therapy and activities use a nonhuman animal as a key therapeutic agent, ranging from highly specified interventions to more casual ones. The review investigates whether a live animal is essential for therapeutic success in animal‑assisted therapy. The authors examined two meta‑analyses and 28 empirical studies to evaluate the animal’s role. The findings suggest that AAT and AAA effects are likely moderate and broad, but current evidence is insufficient to conclusively determine whether a live animal is necessary for therapeutic benefit.

Abstract

Animal-assisted therapy and animal-assisted activities involve a nonhuman animal as a key therapeutic agent in some kind of intervention that may range from highly specified, as in AAT, to more casual, as in AAA. In this review I address the question: How important is the animal in animal therapy? In other words, does the recent literature strongly support the notion that a live animal, as opposed to another novel stimulating component, is specifically necessary for therapeutic success. Two meta-analyses and 28 single empirical studies were reviewed in order to address this issue. I conclude that the effects of AAT and AAA are likely to be moderate and broad at best and that, although improving, the literature has not yet reached an experimentally rigorous enough level to provide a definitive robust conclusion about the effectiveness of these approaches, particularly with regard to the question of whether a live animal is necessary for a therapeutic effect.