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Record W4382242652 · doi:10.1097/cxa.0000000000000176

Seeking Empirical Evidence for the Role of Pets

2023· article· en· W4382242652 on OpenAlexvenueno aff
el-Guebaly Nady

Bibliographic record

VenueThe Canadian Journal of Addiction · 2023
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
TopicHuman-Animal Interaction Studies
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsFriendshipPsychologyMental healthPublic healthPopulationSocial isolationAnxietyEmpirical evidenceSocial psychologyPublic relationsMedicinePolitical sciencePsychiatryEnvironmental healthNursing

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

As our communities reflect on the impact of COVID, our most recent pandemic, attention is being increasingly paid to our experiences with the lack of connection which arose from the isolation associated with the various public health measures advocated for public protection. Dell and Butt,1 in a creative commentary, address the potential remedial benefits of animal companionship, which is receiving increased public support. Pets now appear to be present on public transportation, restaurants, care facilities, and other settings where animals were not previously welcome. Surprisingly, it is reported that the many attempts to garner empirical evidence on the positive role of pets have led to inconclusive results. This commentary adds 2 small, qualitative reports to the database. More consistent evidence arises from population surveys. As the commentary was being accepted for publication, an American Psychiatric Association (APA) Healthy Minds Monthly Poll concluded that 86% of pet owners reported a mostly positive impact on their mental health,2 with most dog and cat owners equally likely to say so. The online poll was fielded in February 2023, among a sample of 2200 adults. The positive impacts reported include reduction of stress and anxiety, unconditional love and support, companionship, a calming presence, and true friendship. The APA, along with the American Veterinary Association, is now inviting pet owners to share their words and post pictures of their own pets on social media, under the hashtag #Paws4MentalHealth. We look forward to more feedback specific to our field. Submissions of Letters to the Editor or Brief Research Reports are welcome! The next articles in this issue address several aspects of delivery of care in need of further empirical exploration. Bahji et al3 reviewed the literature on the effectiveness of specialized inpatient addiction consult services (ACS), now available in an increasing number of hospitals. These types of outcome evaluations are notoriously complex, so it is not surprising that the impact of ACS are not uniformly elucidated. Nevertheless, the article identifies outcome measures such as postdischarge engagement in addiction treatment, which could become standard indicators of a service’s impact. Beyraghi et al4 describe a 2-week, interdisciplinary, postdischarge intervention which could support the previously noted need for engagement in addiction treatment as recommended by the ACS. The high frequency and low barrier contact of the service is particularly valued. Based on a renewed governmental proposal for the involuntary treatment of adult nonoffenders with substance use disorder (SUD), Cooley et al5 conduct a Medline review of the few relevant treatment studies. The current evidence suggests limited benefits, resulting in a recommendation to better redirect resources towards expanding voluntary treatment options. This conclusion appears similar to several other articles addressing the involuntary treatment of non-offending individuals suffering from other mental disorders. The last article, by Lee et al,6 adds a welcome controlled trial of congruent couple therapy in outpatient addiction services. While couples therapy is often recommended as part of the management of recovery, the availability of such services and our randomized trials of this treatment modality are scarce. The motivations of those seeking couple therapy is reported according to the DSM-5 criteria including the experience of suicidal thoughts and/or violence towards a partner. Looking forward to any feedback from the readership.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.563
Threshold uncertainty score0.997

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.084
GPT teacher head0.380
Teacher spread0.296 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designNot applicable
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2023
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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