{"id":27,"date":"2025-08-04T04:45:56","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T04:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.daily-story.com\/?p=27"},"modified":"2025-08-04T04:45:56","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T04:45:56","slug":"can-owning-a-dog-end-your-loneliness-and-depression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.your-dailystory.com\/can-owning-a-dog-end-your-loneliness-and-depression\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Owning A Dog End Your Loneliness And Depression?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Loneliness is a disease that can eat at you and make you regret every decision you’ve made in your life. In fact, numerous studies have shown that people suffering from severe loneliness have a 10% chance of dying early as compared to actively social people. This begs the question; can dogs alleviate the effects of loneliness and improve the individual’s quality of life?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Study<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To retrieve this data, scientists carried out the PAWS trial on 71 adults in Australia. The participants were separated into three major groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • individuals who had purchased a dog<\/strong> one month into the study<\/li>
  • individuals who had plans of purchasing a dog, but agreed not to for the case of the study<\/li>
  • individuals who expressed no interest in purchasing a dog<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    During the study, participants answered questionnaires and handled surveys that focused on any symptoms related to psychological distress, mood change, and loneliness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Results of The Study<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    The final results of the study showed that recent dog owners<\/strong> experienced less loneliness as compared to the participants from the other two groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Interestingly, participants demonstrated tremendous mood changes within the first three months of the study. However, the other two groups did not experience a further increase in loneliness after three to eight months of the study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Participants who also had dogs had relatively fewer negative emotions like anxiety and nervousness in the first three months of living with their dog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Hypothesis of The Study<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    There are quite a number of reasons why dogs can alleviate feelings of loneliness and stress among owners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    One plausible reason is that cuddling your dog<\/strong> daily can improve your moods in the long-term, which ultimately minimizes stress and loneliness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Secondly, when owners walk their dogs, they are more likely to meet and talk to new people and thus, be more social in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Another study also found that dog owners experienced lesser symptoms of psychological stress after they brought a new dog to their home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Nevertheless, these studies cannot really determine whether a dog has a positive or negative effect on the mental well-being of an individual. Additionally, the study was only carried out on women, so there’s no telling how men will react when put to the test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    With this in mind, scientists hope to carry out the experiment on a much larger group to record conclusive findings. They hope to find detailed information on other niches such as anxiety and mental disorders<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Loneliness is a disease that can eat at you and make you regret every decision you’ve made in your life. In fact, numerous studies have shown that people suffering from severe loneliness have a 10% chance of dying early as compared to actively social people. This begs the question; can dogs alleviate the effects of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":646,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-human-and-animal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.your-dailystory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.your-dailystory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.your-dailystory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.your-dailystory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.your-dailystory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.your-dailystory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3235,"href":"https:\/\/www.your-dailystory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions\/3235"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.your-dailystory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.your-dailystory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.your-dailystory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.your-dailystory.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}