NCT04171336

Animal-assisted Therapy for Children and Adolescents With Chronic Pain

Animal-assisted Group Therapy for Children and Adolescents Suffering From Chronic Primary Pain

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 3 (actual)
• Sponsor: University Hospital, Basel, Switzerland · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 8 Years – 16 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Chronic pain is highly prevalent in children and adolescents, up to one in four children will develop pain that persists or recurs for three or more months. Chronic pain is not only linked to significant psychological, physical, and social concerns for affected children and their families, but also places an enormous burden on healthcare systems - in the United States, chronic pain costs around $19.5 billion dollars each year and ranks among the most expensive pediatric health problems. Chronic pain significantly decreases quality of life and is associated with numerous missing days at school or at work. Several interventions exist, however, for some, the risk-benefit profile is not favorable, or the effect sizes are small and the clinical effect can be questioned. In general, a multidisciplinary approach that includes medical, psychological, and physiological aspects has been shown to be most promising in the treatment of chronic pain in children and adolescents. Clinical impressions suggest that an Animal-assisted Therapy (AAT) intervention could be promising, but to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the effectiveness of an AAT intervention for children and adolescents with chronic pain. With this pragmatic trials investigators aim to investigate the pre- and post-intervention differences in pain levels, levels of emotional distress, and quality of life within participants with chronic pain.

Conditions

• Chronic Pain

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Animal-assisted therapy	Six sessions of animal-assisted intervention for children and adolescents, group format. The sessions will focus on psycho-education on pain, mindfulness, defocusing, getting active, and resources. Additionally, the intervention includes two family visits.

Timeline

• Start date: 2020-09-05
• Primary completion: 2021-04-10
• Completion: 2021-05-02
• First posted: 2019-11-20
• Last updated: 2021-05-18

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Switzerland