Worrying if your pet will associate with the issue of health

People with pets often trust their furbabies by providing a massive incentive for their mental health.

About 69% of pet owners say they help them reduce stress and anxiety, 69% believe they offer unconditional love, and 66% see them as a soothing presence in their lives, according to a 2023 report by the American Psychiatric Association.

But having a pet can also be stressful, especially when you have to worry about their health or assign for petcars while you are away.

Now, a recent study suggests that there may be another way that your fluffy covered friend can adversely affect your mental health.

Brian N. Chin, an associate professor of psychology at Trinity College, and his team surveyed over 1,000 pet owners across the US and found that those who felt insecure or worried about their attachment to their pet were more likely to experience depression.

“Our results revealed a clear pattern: the highest anxiety of domestic animal connection was the strongest predictor of depression symptoms,” Chin wrote in the conversation.

“People who felt overly dependent on their pets, constantly worrying about being away from them or if their animals” wanted “again were more likely to experience symptoms of depression.”

In other words, if you are waking up at night asking yourself if your dog is leaving and you secretly hate you, you are probably stealing the wrong tree.

Research suggests that the way you feel about your pet is not necessarily a sign of good mental health.

“Understandably, just feeling emotionally close to a pet was not enough to predict better mental health,” Chin said.

“While some may assume that a stronger connection to a pet automatically leads to greater well -being, our findings suggest that the quality of connection is more important than its intensity.”

It all turns into the theory of connection – people who have safe bond styles tend to feel safe in relationships, while those with unsafe or anxiety styles are afraid of not being loved or abandoned.

While the theory of connection is most commonly applied to romantic relationships between people, this study suggests that the same can be said about your bond with your best animals.

Another startling finding, according to Chin, was that “the frequency of interaction did not significantly anticipate the results of mental health”, giving confidence to the idea that “emotional safety in the relationship, rather than the frequency of interaction, is what really matters to mental health”.

Finally, while the debate if it is better to have a cat or a dog may be enraged, researchers actually discovered that having a cat and a dog increased the risk of depression rather than having just one kind of pet.

“While our study did not determine the cause, one possibility is that the administration of numerous pets can increase stress or increase the burden of custody,” he said.

And if you need a better reason to try to reduce the overall levels of your anxiety – remember that dogs may experience depression and they can smell stress.