Clinical trial NCT01594606: Randomized Control Trial of an Animal-Assisted Intervention With Adjudicated Youth
Official title: RCT of an Animal-Assisted Intervention With Adjudicated Youth
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: PHASE3
Conditions: Conduct Disorder
Depression
Anxiety
Keywords: Animal-assisted intervention
adjudicated adolescents
empathy
Lead sponsor: Wayne State University
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
First posted: 2012-05-09
Enrollment: 150
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 14
Maximum age (years): 17
Standard ages: CHILD
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: TREATMENT

Brief summary: The project involves testing the efficacy of an animal-assisted intervention (AAI). The AAI consists of a 10-week program in which adjudicated adolescents train shelter dogs and will be compared to a dog walking control group matched for educational content and dog contact time. The investigators expect that the AAI will result in improved empathy skills and that dog attachment will explain these findings. The investigators also explore the extent to which the AAI will improve internalizing and externalizing symptoms in these adolescents.

Detailed description: Adjudicated adolescents (i.e., teens who have committed criminal offenses and are incarcerated in juvenile detention centers) have deficits in emotion regulation, including empathy skills, and are at risk for a host of poor outcomes including repeat offenses, internalizing symptoms (e.g., depression, anxiety), externalizing symptoms (e.g., lying, truancy, fighting). Many of these problems stem from a lack of secure attachment to parents and peers. There is a need for novel and innovative programs to help these teens develop more secure attachments and better empathy skills to prevent poor outcomes. One type of intervention is animal-assisted interventions such as dog training programs. These programs appear to build empathy skills in at-risk youth, which may translate into better peer relations, less psychological distress, and less recidivism. The goal of this study is to test an existing animal-assisted intervention program that is already being used in juvenile detention centers to determine whether it is efficacious in improving adjudicated adolescents' empathy skills and psychological symptoms through building a secure attachment to the training dog.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* must be a resident of participating juvenile justice center in Michigan

Exclusion Criteria:

* none

Primary outcomes:
measure: Change in Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms as measured by the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist-Teacher Report and Youth Self Report forms
timeFrame: baseline and 10 weeks
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Change in empathy toward other people
timeFrame: baseline and 10 weeks
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Mt. Clemens
country: United States
facility: Macomb County Juvenile Justice Center
state: Michigan
Study officials:
affiliation: Wayne State University
name: Annmarie Cano, PhD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: