A new study found that attachment to a pet is linked to lower levels of anxiety, but one pet tends to help just a little more than the others.
The study was published in JAMA Network Open on August 1, 2024, which sought to gain a better understanding of how a close bond with a pet can be linked to depression and anxiety for women, and the findings were interesting. Take a look!
Researchers wanted to find out if or how a bond with a pet can impact someone's mental health, specifically curious about women who experience depression and anxiety and who have a history of childhood abuse.
Related: How to Help Your Dog Deal With Separation Anxiety
Researchers included 214 women in the study, 140 of whom owned a pet. Of those who owned a pet, 56% had a dog, and 33% were cat parents. The study also included 74 participants who hadn't owned a pet as a control group.
People involved in the study were asked questions about behaviors and feelings toward the pet they spend most of their time with, asking if they play with their pet, talk with them, or consider them part of the family to measure their level of attachment.
The research team analyzed the data and found that greater pet attachment was associated with lower levels of anxiety overall.
“The level of attachment to a pet appears to be a crucial factor in how pets help reduce their owners’ risk of depression," corresponding author Eva Schernhammer, MD, DrPH, an adjunct professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, told EverydayHealth .
It's specifically a woman's attachment to a dog, which was associated with lower scores in depression, generalized anxiety, and overall anxiety and depression symptoms.
Women With Cats as Pets Didn't See the Same Benefits in Lowered Anxiety Levels
While the research showed overall, people had lowered anxiety and depression levels with dogs, the same didn't happen with cats.
According to the study, women who had an emotional connection with their cat and not a dog didn't experience the same level of anxiety and depression levels.
"There were no statistically significant associations between cat attachment and depression or anxiety," the research team wrote.
It's not been made clear why dogs tend to help women lower their anxiety and depression levels and not cats but there are a few theories.
"It’s not clear why that is — it may have been due to a smaller sample size of cat owners, or differences in the lifestyle and personalities of cat versus dog owners, according to the authors," EverydayHealth writes.
Another potential reason could be related to the different activities people experience with their dogs and not their cats. Cats tend to be more independent than dogs, which might feel like there's less of an emotional attachment.
However, according to Everyday Health, another theory could be the activities people do with dogs, like going for walks outside or interacting with other people through their dogs, which isn't something we typically experience as cat parents.
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