ArticleAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI2024
How Attachment to Dogs and to Other Humans Relate to Mental Health.
Article in Animals : an open access journal from MDPI, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Pet Nutrition and the Unmeasured Owner Outcome: A Bidirectional Framework for Relational Value in Human-Animal Relationships.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Review
- Parental Identity and Subjective Well-Being in Older Women: The Moderating Role of the Human-Dog Bond.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Entangled Bonds: Dyadic Dependence and Co-Regulation in Western Urban Human-Dog Relationships.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Review
- From dyadic deco-construction to reco-construction: a framework for the human-osteoarthritic dog relationship.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2026Review
- A Conceptual Framework for the Co-Construction of Human-Dog Dyadic Relationship.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Review
- Health anxiety by proxy differs in phenomenology between parents and dog owners.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The Relationship Between Attachment to Pets and Mental Health and Wellbeing: A Systematic Review.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
It is unclear how pet ownership is related to mental health, with some previous research suggesting pet owners have better mental health, while other research suggests they have worse mental health. Some researchers have suggested that it may be more useful to investigate the bond people feel with their pets and how this may impact mental health; however, this too has led to mixed results. This study examined how owners' attachment to their dogs was associated with mental health and how this compared to their attachment relationships with other humans in a sample of 607 dog owners. Our findings indicate that both strong and insecure attachments to dogs are linked to poorer mental health outcomes, as was having an insecure attachment style in their human relationships. The adverse impact of strong attachment to dogs on mental health was mediated by these owners having an anxious attachment style toward other people, which in turn was associated with poorer mental health. The relationship between a strong attachment to dogs and poorer mental health was also moderated by gender, with this relationship being significant in women but not significant for men. Together, these results suggest a possible risk to mental health for owners who form a strong attachment to their dogs to compensate for anxious attachments in human relationships.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.