Good Fur The Health
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday June 3, 1999
IT'S ABOUT time we pet owners (or human companion animals, if you prefer) started to claim the cost of keeping a pet on our private health insurance.
The evidence is overwhelming that keeping a pet around your house is good for you. Perhaps it's not right up there with a trip to the GP, but it is probably a lot more effective than some of the alternative therapies for which the health funds now pay quite happily. If you want to make your house happier and healthier, forget the feng shui wind chimes, tinkling Japanese garden and air ioniser, and think about acquiring a small, furry critter instead.
Professor Warwick Anderson, of the Baker Medical Research Institute in Melbourne, wrote an article for the The Medical Journal of Australia in 1992 in which he cited studies
showing that pet owners seek
medical treatment less often and tend to have lower blood pressure than non-pet owners. One American study quoted in the article found that pet owners were more likely than non-pet owners to be alive one year after a heart attack. Anderson reckoned
that pets could save a fortune in health-care budgets.
Research has found that pet owners have a 4 per cent lower risk of cardiovascular disease and fewer incidences of minor illness. They also often take more exercise (especially if they have a dog or a horse), which provides more chances to communicate amiably with their fellow human beings.
Then there's the hottest health topic of the '90s - stress relief. Australians have never felt more stressed. A recent study by the personnel company Drake International found that, of the 3,500 businesses surveyed nationally, up to 85 per cent of workers agreed that their workplaces were stressful.
A national survey of 10,000 workers by the ACTU last year found that one in four Australian workers had taken time off for stress and more than 70 per cent suffered from stress-related health problems.
But effective stress relief could be lying right by your feet as you read this column. According to psychologist Dr David Morawetz, if you're the kind of person who likes pets, they can be a tonic.
"It's safe to express your feelings to a pet and we know that one of the causes of stress is the inability to express negative and positive
emotions," Morawetz says.
"It can also be comforting to have that physical contact, and they give unconditional love, which is a very important human requirement which so many people never get."
Pets can help even if you have more knotty psychological and emotional problems. Morawetz points out that the father of the counselling movement, Carl Rogers, said the three keys to successful counselling were positive unconditional regard, empathy and congruence - Morawetz says your average dog probably takes these three things in his or her stride.
"I'm not saying pets are only for people who don't relate well to other people, but they can certainly help those kind of people. They're also good for older people, especially if a partner has died, and for people with various kinds of disabilities - physical or intellectual."
So, if you've decided to invest some time and money in the health benefits of an animal companion, does it matter what kind of pet you get? Would Alexander Beetle in his matchbox be just as effective - and somewhat cheaper to keep - as an Afghan hound?
Luckily for Alexander, the answer seems to be no. Morawetz says there are various specific ingredients that help make pets beneficial for people - offering something to cuddle (tactile contact), empathy and a degree of emotional response.
"Obviously a fish in a bowl does not respond to you much. Dogs respond the most, cats less so, horses can also respond significantly," he says.
"Of course, if a person was very, very attached to fish, he might relate well to the fish tank. But for most people a dog or cat is the most
effective."
Dr Wendy Moody, a Brisbane GP, did a doctoral thesis at the University of Queensland investigating the health effects of pet ownership. She surveyed 736 city and country folk and found that, generally, people thought dogs were more efficacious for their health than cats.
Older people were especially likely to believe pets had helped them cope with illness and some people thought pets helped children's character development.
According to Moody: "It's terribly important to stress that pets are of great use in everyday life to people for those reasons of companionship, increasing self-esteem, their anti-depressant effect and entertainment effect."
So don't think of your pets as just four-legged furry chums; think of them as ambulatory stress relievers. Which is a very good thing to keep in mind next time the dog pees on the carpet or the cat sharpens her claws on the couch. Take a deep breath, and relax.
© 1999 Sydney Morning Herald
Share This