People with pets are more prone to depression and anxiety

 "Only after a person falls in love with an animal can a certain part of the soul be awakened."

　　 When it comes to keeping pets, people often think of words like "healing" and "cute". And with the increasing number of pet owners, research on the relationship between pet ownership and improvement of health and happiness has become a hot topic. Generally, people generally accept a "pet effect", believing that the companionship of animals will bring benefits to the owner's health and well-being.

　　 Replica hermes - However, a recent paper published by a research team at Victoria University of Wellington is different. The study focused on demographic factors, personality, health and well-being of pet owners in New Zealand. The results of the study showed:

　　 Compared with people who do not own pets, pet owners are more likely to be diagnosed with depression and anxiety. Moreover, compared with other pet types, cat owners have significantly more anxiety.

In fact, research on the "pet effect" is diverse. Part of the research focuses on the health benefits of pets.

For example, a study in 1980 found that after a heart attack, people with pets had a higher survival rate than people without pets; in 2004, a study found that interaction with pets increased human immunoglobulin A (A type of antibody); in 2017, there were also experiments showing that keeping pets can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

　　 Of course, at the same time, another part of the research focuses on mental health. Multiple previous studies have shown that pet owners have a lower sense of loneliness, a higher sense of self, and a higher sense of happiness than people who do not own pets. Some time ago, a study also found that young children in dog households have better social and emotional conditions.

　　Details: Keeping a dog as a child can prevent schizophrenia in adulthood, but not a cat

　　 However, some studies have reached the opposite conclusion.

For example, a 2010 study found that among patients admitted to hospital for acute coronary syndrome, pet owners are more likely to have heart-related deaths or readmissions than non-pet owners.

　　A community survey in Australia also showed that pet owners are more likely to smoke, have higher body mass index and blood pressure, have more depressive symptoms, and use more painkillers than non-pet owners.

　　 Pet owners are more prone to depression and anxiety

　　 In order to resolve the disputes between previous studies, the Victoria University research team first found out the reasons for the disputes. The paper stated that the large differences in the results of previous studies are due to more or less flaws in their research methods: the sample is too small, the participants are limited to a certain group (for example, only the elderly), or the participants’ Personality characteristics and so on.

　　 Therefore, this study has adopted a variety of measures to make up for the deficiencies of previous studies. First, they used seven indicators to measure the benefits of pet ownership, namely: participant personality characteristics, self-evaluated health status, health status diagnosis, psychological distress, self-awareness, community awareness, and life satisfaction.

　　Secondly, in order to avoid sample bias, they used the New Zealand National Census data and randomly selected 13,347 participants in the age range of 18-97. Finally, the study also noted the influence of demographic factors (such as race, social relations, location, etc.) on the results.

In order to test the relationship between demographic factors and pet ownership, the study used binomial logistic regression analysis and found that pet owners are more likely to be women, young people, Europeans, or have children, are in love, have a job, or live. People who live in rural areas and in wealthier areas.

　　 Then, in order to assess whether pet ownership is related to personality factors, the study again used binomial logistic regression. The results show that pet owners are generally more open and less responsible. But it has nothing to do with personality traits such as extroversion, neuroticism, honesty and modesty.

　　 But surprisingly, the research results also show that pet owners are 1.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with depression and 1.31 times more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety than those without pets.

　　 Cat owners have more depressive symptoms!

　　 It is worth mentioning that in addition to whether to have pets, this study also focused on the impact of pet types on health and happiness. Researchers divided pets into 8 groups, namely "no pets", "cats only", "dogs only", "cats and dogs", "cats and other animals", "dogs and other animals", "cats" , Dogs and other animals", "All other". Among them, 63% of the participants had at least one cat, and 50.4% of the participants had at least one dog.

The final conclusion is that all types of pet owners are more likely to diagnose depression than people who do not own pets, and the "cats only" and "cats and dogs" group participants have a higher anxiety diagnosis rate than non-pet owners . In terms of personality characteristics, the "cats only", "cats and dogs" and "cats and other animals" participants had lower conscientious scores than those who did not own cats. This means that the depression and anxiety symptoms of cat owners are likely to be more pronounced than those of other animals.

　　 However, because the data in this study is horizontal, the causal direction of the above results is temporarily uncertain. In other words, it is unclear whether keeping pets increases the possibility of diagnosis of depression and anxiety, or whether depression and anxiety factors increase the possibility of keeping pets.

　　 Some researchers(sitemap) have suggested that the former may be caused by pets that lead to greater life pressure and more responsibilities, as well as the long-term sadness and depression of the owner after losing the pet.

In fact, this question finally seems to return to the cycle of "the chicken or the egg". However, the researchers also hinted that another explanation seems more feasible: People with generally poor health and well-being tend to look for pets as companions and comfort.

　　 Some reddit netizen said that it seems reasonable: "People are more willing to believe that people with depression or anxiety tend to have a pet to help them reduce their loneliness."