Exploring the role of service dogs for Canadian military Veterans experiencing suicidality
| dc.contributor.author | Pavelich, Alexandria R. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Dell, Colleen A. | |
| dc.contributor.author | De Groot, Paul | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-04-15T06:38:09Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-04-15T06:38:09Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2024-05-06 | |
| dc.description | © The Authors 2024. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long the use is non-commercial and you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. | |
| dc.description.abstract | Despite ample anecdotal evidence, there are limited meaningful studies speaking to the important role of the human-animal bond (HAB) in reducing suicidality. However, research is increasingly showing the viability of service dogs (SDs) as a complementary approach for military Veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance use harms – two of the strongest indicators of suicidality across any population. An original, exploratory study completed in 2020 focused on how SDs supported Canadian Veterans living with PTSD and substance use concerns. From this work, a secondary analysis was then undertaken: 28 transcripts were examined through thematic analysis to explore the experiences of the Veterans who were identified as being at high risk for suicide to better understand how SDs may assist with their suicidality. Our methodological approach for the secondary analysis employed affective coding to discover how the social support system enabled by the SDs reduced experiences of loneliness and hopelessness, as well as symptoms of PTSD, depression, and substance use concerns that are commonly associated with suicidality. The SDs were reported by the Veterans as being a catalyst in reducing self-harm and suicidality, as the HAB provided a unique and necessary form of social support for Veterans that was distinct from what other human-human interactions could provide. While acknowledgement of how context specificity and the lived experience of each individual remains crucial for making sense of suicidality, the significant finding from this research has been the identification of the critical impact that SDs have in the lives of Veterans when it comes to preventing suicide. The SD has been explained as a bridge to improve Veterans’ overall quality of life and reduce markers commonly recognized as precursors to suicide – a finding that may be critical in helping reduce future suicide risk among military Veterans, and warrants further investigation. | |
| dc.description.sponsorship | Funding for the original study was provided by Health Canada through their Substance Use and Addictions (SUAP) program. The secondary analysis was funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, Master’s level Canada Graduate Scholarship. | |
| dc.description.version | Peer Reviewed | |
| dc.identifier.citation | Pavelich, A. R., Dell, C. A., & De Groot, P. (2024). Exploring the role of service dogs for Canadian military Veterans experiencing suicidality. Human-Animal Interactions. https://doi.org/10.1079/hai.2024.0015 | |
| dc.identifier.doi | 10.1079/hai.2024.0015 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10388/16811 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.rights | Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 Canada | en |
| dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/ca/ | |
| dc.subject | human-animal bond (HAB) | |
| dc.subject | suicidality | |
| dc.subject | service dogs | |
| dc.subject | military Veterans | |
| dc.subject | post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) | |
| dc.title | Exploring the role of service dogs for Canadian military Veterans experiencing suicidality | |
| dc.type | Article |
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