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A Systematic Review Of Canine Assisted Psychotherapy For Youth At Risk Or With Mental Health Disorders, Hedieh Hakakian

Theses and Dissertations

Mental health disorders among youth are often underrepresented in research, resulting in a delay and under-treatment of their needs (Catania et al., 2011). While their needs are frequently under-treated, research suggests that youth often experience mental health problems that subsequently lead to difficulties in adulthood (Carballo et al., 2011) necessitating a need to identify efficacious treatments to these problems. This systematic review used a mixed-methods design to analyze current literature on the use of Canine-Assisted Psychotherapy (CAP) with youth ages 0-20. The aims of the study were to (a) understand the impact of CAP on mental health (i.e., clinical diagnosis …