NCT01594606

Randomized Control Trial of an Animal-Assisted Intervention With Adjudicated Youth

RCT of an Animal-Assisted Intervention With Adjudicated Youth

• Status: Completed
• Phase: Phase 3
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 150 (actual)
• Sponsor: Wayne State University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 14 Years – 17 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The project involves testing the efficacy of an animal-assisted intervention (AAI). The AAI consists of a 10-week program in which adjudicated adolescents train shelter dogs and will be compared to a dog walking control group matched for educational content and dog contact time. The investigators expect that the AAI will result in improved empathy skills and that dog attachment will explain these findings. The investigators also explore the extent to which the AAI will improve internalizing and externalizing symptoms in these adolescents.

Detailed description

Adjudicated adolescents (i.e., teens who have committed criminal offenses and are incarcerated in juvenile detention centers) have deficits in emotion regulation, including empathy skills, and are at risk for a host of poor outcomes including repeat offenses, internalizing symptoms (e.g., depression, anxiety), externalizing symptoms (e.g., lying, truancy, fighting). Many of these problems stem from a lack of secure attachment to parents and peers. There is a need for novel and innovative programs to help these teens develop more secure attachments and better empathy skills to prevent poor outcomes. One type of intervention is animal-assisted interventions such as dog training programs. These programs appear to build empathy skills in at-risk youth, which may translate into better peer relations, less psychological distress, and less recidivism. The goal of this study is to test an existing animal-assisted intervention program that is already being used in juvenile detention centers to determine whether it is efficacious in improving adjudicated adolescents' empathy skills and psychological symptoms through building a secure attachment to the training dog.

Conditions

• Conduct Disorder
• Depression
• Anxiety

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Animal-assisted intervention	The experimental group will receive 10 weeks of classroom training and hands-on experience working with dogs to teach them basic obedience skills. Each participant will work with the same dog each week. The active control group will receive 10 weeks of classroom training and will walk a different dog each week but will not teach obedience skills to the dogs.

Timeline

• Start date: 2012-05-01
• Primary completion: 2014-08-01
• Completion: 2015-06-01
• First posted: 2012-05-09
• Last updated: 2015-12-09

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States