Animal Assisted Interventions, effective in preventing suicide

On the occasion of World Suicide Prevention Day, which will be held on September 10, the URJC Animals and Society Chair invites us to promote the need to educate and raise awareness about this problem, as well as to promote the importance of those treatments responsible for reducing it.

Marine Sources

Animal Assisted Interventions (IAA), They offer one of the possible therapies that can promote the prevention and reduction of the alarming figures of suicides.

These therapies, generally carried out with dogs, help people with high levels of stress, anxiety or depression, achieving emotional, physical and social improvement in each of them, raising their self-esteem and reducing feelings of rejection or loneliness.

"The Animals are an excellent instrument for channeling emotions and, therefore, therapies carried out with people with suicidal tendencies usually have satisfactory results” explains Nuria Máximo, director of the Animals and Society Chair.

In this way, Animal Assisted Interventions have managed to have a great weight in today's society due to the affective bond that is generated in them with other animals, promoting the integral well-being of people at an individual and social level.

On the other hand, it should be noted that there is a close relationship between mental illness and suicide. In this sense, the Animals and Society Chair launched this year the program "Creating Ties", a research project of Assisted Therapy with Dogs developed in a center of the Association of Relatives and People with Mental Illness of Asturias (AFESA) in collaboration with the Entrecanes association, aimed at adults diagnosed with a psychotic disorder, a mental illness, among the one that highlights schizophrenia, which carries a rate of between 10% and 13% of completed suicides and 40% of suicide attempts.