Service Dog Partnerships: An Exploration of Biopsychosocial Wellbeing

Abstract

Service dog partnerships are a unique intervention designed to assist individuals with disabilities through specialized trained tasks and support. As the popularity of service dog partnerships continues to grow, there remains a notable deficiency in rigorous empirical evidence surrounding their effectiveness. This gap has resulted in inadequate financial support, insufficient legal protections, limited guidance for healthcare professionals, and protracted waiting periods for individuals seeking these partnerships. Historically, research in this field has been hindered by underreporting of intervention details, limitations in study design, and an over-reliance on anecdotal accounts and subjective self-assessment. This dissertation aims to investigate the associations between service dog partnerships and outcomes for individuals with disabilities through a multimethod approach spanning four biopsychosocial domains. It consists of four chapters, each a stand-alone manuscript—three of which have been published in peer-reviewed journals, with the fourth under review. In Chapter 2, we investigated psychiatric service dog partnerships for military veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) using retrospective self-report surveys and blinded clinician assessments. We found that service dog partnerships were significantly associated with lower PTSD symptom severity, depression, and anxiety; lower odds of clinician PTSD diagnosis; and higher quality of life in most areas. In Chapter 3, we employed ecological momentary assessment to measure the momentary psychosocial wellbeing of these same veterans. Service dog partnership predicted better social interaction quality (but not quantity), better affect, and lower odds of having a panic attack. Service dog placements were associated with greater activity participation, but lower odds of being away from home. In Chapter 4, we employed a constant comparative approach to analyze survey responses from caretakers of autistic children involved in a service dog program. We found that service dog partnerships were beneficial to families both internally and externally, consistent with a family systems approach. Finally, in Chapter 5, we explored overnight sleep-wake interaction in veteran-service dog dyads through actigraphy-based measures of movement and sleep. We found that dyads exhibited sleep-wake concordance at rates similar to those reported in other close attachment relationships, and that service dogs were more sensitive to veteran wakefulness than the other way around. Collectively, this portfolio of four manuscripts represents a significant contribution to the scientific discourse surrounding service dog partnerships, advancing the establishment of these partnerships as an evidence-based complementary intervention for individuals with disabilities.