Dog ownership and psychosocial outcomes during collective trauma: Perceived social support, coping, and meaning in life
Background: War and prolonged collective trauma highlight the need to identify relational factors associated with well-being under sustained threat.
Objectives: This study examined whether dog ownership was associated with perceived social support, coping strategies, and meaning in life, and whether therapists who integrated dogs into professional practice differed from non-therapist dog owners in human-dog relationship characteristics.
Methods: This cross-sectional study included 493 adults. Participants completed questionnaires assessing perceived social support, coping strategies, and meaning in life. The sample comprised 343 dog owners and 150 non-dog owners; 84 owners were therapists who integrated dogs into professional practice. Dog owners completed the Monash Dog-Owner Relationship Scale.
Results: After adjustment for age, gender, and military service history, dog owners had a higher adjusted mean on the significant-other social-support subscale than non-dog owners (adjusted mean difference, 0.25; 95% CI, 0.03–0.46; p = 0.023), but the association did not remain significant after Holm correction across nine outcomes (adjusted p = 0.207). This subscale assesses perceived human support from a special person, not support from the dog. No robust ownership-group differences were found in meaning in life, coping, or other social-support outcomes. Among dog owners, therapists reported greater interaction and emotional closeness with their dogs than non-therapists. They reported higher presence of meaning in an exploratory comparison; because therapist status and professional dog integration were inseparable, this difference cannot be attributed to dog integration.
Conclusion: The findings support a cautious, exploratory interpretation of associations between dog ownership, professional dog integration, and the psychosocial outcomes measured.
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