As they venture through the school day, students often feel trapped in stressful classrooms with no reprieve. Therapy animals have the opportunity to be a solution for high stress levels felt by students while at school. Therapy animals aren’t incorporated into our school’s culture as much as they should be, therefore, there needs to be more therapy animals available on campus to provide proper support for students.
Stress is a continually growing problem among adolescents. According to the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, about 30 percent of people ages 10 to 19 will experience some form of an anxiety-related disorder, and this is continuing to rise.
Stress can result from school, home, work, sports and various other things. All of this combined can become overwhelming and an easy solution is animal therapy. Therapy animals are available at the Wellness Center on campus during some days at lunch, but the schedule is inconsistent and does not provide proper aid to students who need it.
The Wellness Center has partnered with Marin Humane, allowing volunteers to occasionally bring their animals on campus. It’s important to partner with more organizations so therapy animals can be more available for student use. The Wellness Center should be taking advantage of other organizations like Pet Partner to get more animals on campus.
Therapy animals can have many benefits such as increased socio-emotional development as well as advanced literacy and memory skills. A study done by Jasmine Morris at the University of Connecticut surveyed 22 students who attended their library’s “Paws to Relax” program. At the beginning and end, they were given a survey asking how they felt on the range of “Very Relaxed” to “Very Stressed.”
The results of the first survey had the students reporting they were in the range of “Somewhat Stressed” to “Somewhat Relaxed.” The results of the second survey had the students reporting they were either “Somewhat Relaxed” or “Very Relaxed.”
After completing the survey, Morris went over the results to draw up conclusions about if the students benefited from the therapy animals.
“There was a statistically significant difference between the pre and post-intervention results, which directly resulted from the intervention. The intervention was successful in reducing students’ stress levels,” Morris said.
Due to schools constantly piling on more homework and tests with no remorse, therapy animals need to be more common in schools. This would allow students an outlet to deal with the overbearing workload that they carry. If therapy animals were more accessible, kids could meet with them multiple times a day and be in an environment that is comfortable and enjoyable for them.
An important aspect of stress and anxiety that hasn’t been properly addressed in schools is social anxiety. Not everyone is open to talking about their feelings or wanting to have a conversation with another person. If therapy animals were available more frequently during the school day, students who are becoming overwhelmed could use these animals to help deal with their stress without having to “talk it out” with someone.
Therapy animals can also help those who speak different languages and don’t have access to a counselor at school. Animals do not need to speak with a person in order to give them comfort. Everyone deserves support and a language barrier should not hinder a person’s ability to gain the comfort that they need.
An understandable reason that limits the abundance of therapy animals on campus are allergies. However, no solution is ever perfect for dealing and managing stress. People who are allergic to animals will be affected by the addition of animal therapy being adopted in schools.
While this does hinder their appeal in schools, therapy animals have already been introduced to Redwood, and they have not caused a huge disruption. Increasing the availability of therapy animals won’t change much in the already introduced program, and it will be tremendously impactful on the students who need them.
