Owning a pet can have therapeutic value

GIVEN the opportunity, most pet owners will rave about the joys of sharing their homes with an animal, be it a collie or a chameleon. But they may not realize that, beyond pleasure, their nonhuman companions could help to improve their mental and physical health and even extend their lives.

More than half the nation's households have at least one pet and some have several. While dogs and cats are by far the most popular companion animals, millions of people share their homes with fish, birds, rodents, reptiles, amphibians and even insects.

Although pets have long been an integral part of American life (most people consider their pets members of the family), researchers are only just beginning to explore what pets can do for the people who care for them.

Their tantalizing findings have prompted a host of studies and programs in which pets are used to treat the mentally ill, revitalize the elderly, modivate the handicapped, calm the overly aggressive, relieve the lonely and give a renewed sense of purpose to the forlorn. Interaction with pets has even been shown to help lower blood pressure and improve the life expectancy of heart patients.

To be sure, pets are not always a blessing. They can be costly, demanding of time, care and energy, and can even become a source of family conflict, such as when Father ends up having to walk the dog his child had agreed to care for. Urban dwellers may find large pets to be more a bother than a boon, and in some cases pets can be a source of ailments transmissible to their owners. Still, many benefits of owning a pet have been noted in various recent studies.

Benefits to young and old. According to Gerald Jay Westbrook of the Andrus Gerontology Center at the University of Southern California, pets, and especially pet dogs, can offer protection, companionship and unconditional love.

Pets are, he said, ''nonthreatening, nonjudgmental, open, welcoming, accepting and attentive.'' Unlike spouses or parents, they don't talk back, criticize or issue commands. They give people something to care and worry about and be responsible for and make them feel needed and wanted. They also provide a socially acceptable outlet for the need for physical contact. Men have been observed to touch their pets as often and as lovingly as women do.

Pets help to combat loneliness and have been shown to increase their owners' chances of meeting other people. A study in London's Hyde Park showed that when accompanied by their dogs, pet owners spoke to more people and had longer conversations than when they walked alone. In Sweden, 63 percent of dog owners surveyed said their pets had added to their opportunities to talk to people and 57 percent said their dogs had ''got them friends.''

Pets also help to organize a person's day (a dog used to being walked and fed at 7 A.M. is not likely to let you loll in bed until 9). They provide sense of purpose, help to enhance self-esteem and self-control and generally alleviate the adverse effects of stress.

Pets can also be a source of solace (a teddy bear for all ages) and help to dissipate negative emotions like anger, disappointment and grief. Virtually all people talk to their pets and sometimes use them to work through conflicts or problems. Some couples have been observed to talk to each other through their pets.

A study at the University of Maryland suggested that pets help to bring families closer together, reducing conflict and tension and increasing play among family members. Dr. Erika Friedman, a health scientist at Brooklyn College, says that people who are ''de-pressed by the loss of a relative or friend can learn to love others again through first learning to love and care for a pet.''

For children, pets help to teach responsibility, nurturing, compassion, loyalty and empathy. Unlike adults in their interaction with children, pets are uncritical, consistently loving and don't give orders. In this age when both parents are often at work when children come home from school, pets offer children a dependable ''welcome home'' and a feeling of security.

Pets are becoming popular visitors to nursing homes and old-age homes, and in some cases, residents themselves. A University of Minnesota study of 774 long-term health care facilities disclosed that about half were using pets to help their residents. Pets were said to provide nursing-home residents with entertainment and enjoyment, to serve as an outlet for the expression of feelings, rekindle pleasant memories and create a more homelike atmosphere.

Dramatic improvements in outlook and ability have been noted among nursing-home residents as a result of pet programs. Previously uncommunicative and bedridden patients have started talking to the staff and other residents about their pets and some have even got up and gone out to walk their pets.

However, Mr. Westbrook of the Gerontology Center cautions that the introduction of pets into a nursing home or other institutional facility must be carefully planned to insure effectiveness and safety for the residents, staff and the pets themselves. His group has established guidelines, which he will share with those who call him at 213-743-5158 or 213-876-7445.

Dr. Daniel Lago's program at Pennsylvania State University has given pets to 65 rural elderly people, nearly half of whom live alone. For some, he reports, the pets have sparked ''dramatic transformations,'' enabling severely disabled people to rise above their disability and helping depressed, reclusive people become more socially active. His preliminary observations suggest that closeness to a pet is the key to its benefits, showing an association with higher morale, greater social activity and better physical health.

Treating the emotionally disturbed. Pet-facilitated therapy has brought sometimes remarkable improvement in patients with otherwise intractable mental illnesses.

According to psychotherapists at the Ohio State University College of Medicine, Sonny was a 19-year-old psychotic who spent nearly all his time lying in his hospital bed. Nothing seemed to interest or reach him, his answers to questions were limited to ''yes,'' ''no'' and ''I don't know'' and he did not respond to traditional therapies. But when a wire-haired fox terrier was brought to his bed, Sonny showed an immediate interest, smiled broadly and was soon out of bed frolicking with the dog. He then asked his first question, ''Where can I keep him?''

For Sonny, his psychiatrist said, the terrier was the turning point of therapy, providing the needed wedge in Sonny's emotionally locked door. He began to take an interest in his surroundings and to request and respond to therapy and he was soon discharged as recovered.

In another instance, 25-year-old Marsha, diagnosed as suffering from catatonic schizophrenia, showed no improvement after drug and electroshock therapy. In fact, her condition worsened and she became totally withdrawn, frozen and almost mute.

Then a dog was brought to her and she began to follow it about, walk it, stroke it and talk about it to the other patients. Within six days of receiving the dog, Marsha had improved markedly and shortly afterward she was discharged from the hospital.

The Ohio therapists, Samuel A. Corson, Elizabeth O'Leary Corson and Peter H. Gwynne, stumbled upon the value of pets in treatment. They had established a dog ward at the hospital to study animal behavior. Hearing the dogs bark, several patients, some of whom had been uncommunicative throughout their hospital stay, broke their selfimposed silence and asked if they could play with or help care for the animals.

Impressed with the apparent benefits of the interaction between patients and dogs, the therapists began a more systematic study, discovering in the process that pets have been used occasionally in psychotherapy as far back as the 18th century and that modern petoriented psychotherapy had been described in detail by Boris M. Levinson in 1969. However, its effectiveness has received little systematic study to date.

Autistic children have shown some improvement in a special program in Florida involving dolphins. Pets have also helped to calm hyperactive and overly aggressive children. In an institution for the criminally insane, inmates were given pet birds, fish, hamsters, guinea pigs and gerbils. Some of the men became very nurturing and assumed full responsibility for the care of their pets. The animals helped to establish trust and a communications link between inmates and staff.

Many questions remain to be answered about pet-facilitated therapy. Who is likely to be helped by it, for example, how should the pet be matched to the patient and when in treatment should a pet be introduced.

Aiding the sick and handicapped. Seeing Eye dogs for the blind are universally known, but few realize that now there are also ''hearingear'' dogs for the deaf. Dogs can also be trained to retrieve and carry things for people confined to wheelchair or bed.

In addition, a pet can provide the impetus for improvement in a physical disability. Dr. Lago at Penn State tells of a woman disabled by a broken hip who was given a dog for protection. One day the dog ran upstairs and, not knowing why, the woman followed, discovering for the first time that she could navigate the stairs.

Learning to ride a horse can help to put a handicapped child on a more equal basis with normal children. Therapists have noted an improvement in muscle tone, self-confidence and spirits of handicapped children as a result of horseback riding.

The value of pets to people with various organic ailments is just beginning to be explored. In a pioneering study, Dr. Friedman of Brooklyn College and her former colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for the Interaction of Animals and Society showed that among 92 victims of heart disease, significantly more pet owners survived for at least one year than did those without pets. Twenty-eight percent of those without a pet were dead in a year, whereas only 6 percent of those with pets had died.

Dr. Friedman and Alan Beck of the University of Pennsylvania report that watching fish in a tank lowers blood pressure, promotes relaxation and counters the adverse physiological effects of stress. Dr. Aaron H. Katcher, a psychiatrist who heads the university's people-animal center, says his group is studying the importance of touching animals as a source of comfort that might not be available from other people.