Project Summary
Social anxiety disorder is the most common anxiety disorder in the United States and is particularly common
among adolescents. Social anxiety is linked to a host of maladaptive developmental outcomes for youth,
including loneliness, other anxiety disorders, and depression, and youth with social anxiety often do not access
mental health services. One area of high clinical and practical value is identifying innovative ways to support
adaptive coping strategies that will help adolescents manage social anxiety. Dog companionship has the
potential to be an effective strategy for supporting youth with anxiety by promoting behavioral and cognitive
strategies that are associated with adaptive coping. However, the existing body of evidence regarding pets and
mental health suggests that pet ownership is neither universally beneficial in all circumstances, nor applicable
to all youth due to the unique and variable nature of dog-youth relationships. Currently, there are significant
gaps in the existing evidence regarding specificity in how, for which individuals, experiencing what
circumstances, via what processes dog relationships can promote adaptive coping for adolescents. These
gaps in nuanced data limit current translational impact and the ability to design and scale interventions. Our
overall objective is to harness the potential of dog-youth interaction by identifying the specific ways that these
relationships can be optimized to support adaptive coping for adolescents experiencing social anxiety. To
address this objective, we will use a multi-method, integrated approach to determine: (Aim 1) longitudinal inter-
individual differences in trajectories of associations between dog-adolescent relationships and adaptive coping
with social anxiety, (Aim 2) family-level processes involved in adolescent-dog relationships that support
adaptive coping with social anxiety over time, and (Aim 3) how the momentary effects of interactions with a pet
dog influence continuously collected peripheral physiology as an indicator of anxious arousal. The long-term
goal of this research is to decrease the mental health burden of social anxiety during a crucial period of
adolescent social development via dog companionship. By identifying both the processes and mechanisms
involved in dog interaction and adaptive coping, we will advance practitioners’ ability to maximize adaptive
coping strategies supported by dog interactions during a crucial period of adolescent social development. The
results will further enable evidence-based recommendations for successfully leveraging dog relationships to
inform future research on clinical interventions involving dogs.
