RCT of an Animal-Assisted Intervention With Adjudicated Youth

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.