Those who had a pet dog in their first 12 years were up to 24 percent less likely to have schizophrenia.
But it didn’t protect against bipolar disorder – and the pet cat didn’t have any impact on either problem, say researchers at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. They had questioned a group of 1,371 people aged between 18 and 65 – 396 of whom had schizophrenia, 381 were bipolar, and the rest didn’t have any mental health issues – about having a pet dog or cat growing up. The greatest protection seemed to be between birth and the age of three, although the researchers said there was a positive effect up to the age of 12.
The researchers don’t really know why having a dog has such a positive impact on mental health, but they think it may have a physical cause, with perhaps something in a dog’s microbiome bolstering the immune system in people that protects them against psychiatric disorders.
Whatever the reason, it could mean that 840,000 cases of schizophrenia in the US – that’s 24 percent of the 3.5 million sufferers – might never have happened if there had been a dog in the family home.
(Source: PLOS ONE, 2019; 14: e0225320)
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