The Role of Animal Assisted Therapy in Mediating Pediatric Dental Anxiety (2024)

Undergraduate: Noor Dar

Faculty Advisor: Laura Jacox
Department: Psychology and Neuroscience

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Dental anxiety is defined as an emotional state of extreme stress or apprehension when exposed to the environment of a dental setting. This condition manifests in childhood and can cause avoidance behaviors into adulthood if left unresolved. This can increase the risk of oral disease, tooth loss, infection, and in severe cases death. Previous studies have shown the benefit of animal assisted therapy (AAT) as a non-pharmacological approach in reducing anxiety and few have investigated what the implementation within the dental setting would yield. These studies predict optimistic results however, they are not fully comprehensive. This study aims to investigate the role of animal assisted therapy in reducing pediatric dental anxiety. Since animal assisted therapy has reduced anxiety among patients within other medical settings, we theorized that pediatric patients would display maintained lower physiological stress data and reduced pain, fear, and anxiety with the intervention of AAT. Audio and video records were collected from pediatric patients (n=39). Salivary samples and heart rate data was collected at key points throughout the duration of the visit and surgical procedures to measure alpha amylase and cortisol. Pain data was measured via the Wong-Beaker scale and collected through self-reported assessments. The dental fear data was collected through a self-reported CFSS-DS scale, and anxiety data was collected via the self-reported MCDAS scale. The intervention of animal assisted therapy significantly reduced post-operative pain and increased sustained relaxed lower body physiological effects. There were no significant results in the salivary amylase or cortisol measures.