One of the difficulties for people who have been on lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic was how to cope with the death of a loved one.

Funeral services have been postponed and individuals were left to grieve in isolation.

A recent study by a faculty-student research group at Slippery Rock University might have an answer to the grieving part of the equation via animal-assisted therapy, although research focused on a specific population that has been isolated for entirely different reasons: prison inmates.

“We take for granted person-to-person contact when we lose somebody in our life,” said Yvonne Eaton-Stull, assistant professor of public health and social work. “We have physical comfort and we can go to funerals, but individuals who are incarcerated, they don’t get that. Sometimes they get a phone call or a chaplain tells them (about the death of a loved one).”

SRU researchers tested the effects of animal-assisted therapy on bereaving inmates at the State Correctional Institution in Cambridge Springs, Crawford County.

Eaton-Stull led similar interventions for inmates with other mental afflictions, such as those diagnosed with anxiety or susceptible to self-harm. She decided to lead another intervention targeting bereavement.

Joining Eaton-Stull were two SRU students, Janel Jones, a senior dual criminology and criminal justice and social work major, and Francine Lilien, a senior public health and social work major. The group traveled to the prison once a week for six sessions with a total of 32 incarcerated women. Inmates were broken into four groups, two that met with therapy dogs and two control groups that did not.

“(Inmates) can’t express themselves because if they show too much emotion, then it can be viewed as a weakness in a prison setting,” Eaton-Stull said of the spring 2019 study. “This type of therapy allows them to properly deal with their emotions.”

Inmates measured their emotions on a scale varying from severe feelings of separation from a loved one to symptoms such as feelings of loneliness, crying and longing. Two licensed therapy dogs interacted with inmates for the animal-assisted therapy groups.

“I didn’t know what to expect going into a prison for the first time,” Jones said. “(With my fields of study) this gave me a great opportunity to actually experience people who are incarcerated and see for myself what it’s like, instead of my perceptions from what I see in the movies.”

Survey results reflected the benefits researchers saw first-hand. Among the animal-assisted intervention group, 71 percent of the women found the sessions “extremely supportive.” However, for the control groups that did not work with the dogs, only 40 percent rated the sessions as being “extremely supportive.”

In the past year, the SRU researchers presented their findings at the Forensic Rights and Treatment Conference in Harrisburg and at the National Organization of Forensic Social Work Conference in Las Vegas.

“Sometimes we forget that (inmates) are humans too and they deserve to feel appreciated and to express their feelings out somehow,” Lilien said. “It was such a great experience because I was really able to see the positive results of using animal-assisted therapy. The inmates received a lot of social support and they could really process and share their feelings.”

In addition to helping the SRU students and the inmates, the findings could have a lasting effect on the treatment options for people who are grieving.

“The dogs were very responsive to the emotions of the inmates and in comforting them,” Eaton-Stull said. “I think it’s pretty exciting because if we can enhance treatment by introducing therapy dogs, that can have an impact on positive mental health in the future.”

Justin Zackal is a communications specialist with Slippery Rock University.