Dogs on Call, a therapy dog program offered by the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Center for Human-Animal Interaction, provides visits from registered therapy dogs to most patients at the VCU Medical Center and some off-campus locations.

Nancy Gee, Ph.D., a professor in the VCU School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry, notes, “To our knowledge, this is the first study of its kind to examine how dogs impact loneliness in people hospitalized for the treatment of acute mental illness.” She is also the director of the VCU Center for Human-Animal Interaction, which operates the Dogs on Call therapy dog program to enhance the well-being of patients, visitors and team members across VCU Health.

“Our findings show that there is something unique about the presence of a therapy dog that provides immediate improvement in loneliness, above and beyond that of human interactions or the standard of care,” says Gee.

The study involved 60 research participants that were receiving treatment for acute mental illness at VCU Health. The results showed participants visited by therapy dogs experienced the biggest reduction in loneliness levels on average.