Marie Jose Enders-Slegers

Open Universiteit Nederland | OU · Department of Psychology

Objective Western countries face ageing populations and increasing numbers of older adults receiving long-term care at home (home care). Approximately 50% of households in Western countries own pets, and while pets impact the health and wellbeing of their owners, most healthcare organisations do not account for the role of pets in the lives of thei...

Older adults receiving long-term care at home (LTCH-clients) were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and its countermeasures. Previous research suggests that pets can mitigate some of the pandemic’s impacts for older adults but results are contradictory. Our aim was to investigate experiences of LTCH-clients and the significance of their pets during...

Abstract: Attachment characteristics play a key role in mental health and in understanding mental disorders. The aim of this study was to gain insight into the role the attachment characteristics can play in treatment effects in adult patients with intrapsychic and interpersonal problems who underwent Equine-assisted Short-term Psychodynamic Psycho...

Citation: Howell, T.J.; Nieforth, L.; Thomas-Pino, C.; Samet, L.; Agbonika, S.; Cuevas-Pavincich, F.; Fry, N.E.; Hill, K.; Jegatheesan, B.; Kakinuma, M.; et al. Defining Terms

This chapter concerns the complexity of interspecies relationships in contemporary world. These relationships are ever-changing, yet continuously prone to anthropocentric attitudes and practices, prompting a reflection on the ways people use and abuse (other) animals. The authors offer an outlook on these phenomena focusing on the human-animal bond...

As part of an 8-week intervention study in Dutch nursing homes, we used video-analysis to observe the interaction of psychogeriatric participants with either the handler, the stimulus (dog or robot) or other clients during weekly dog, robot (RAI, robot assisted interventions) and control (human facilitator only) group sessions. Additionally, we mea...

Background Over half of the households in The Netherlands have one or more pets. In elderly people, owning a pet is associated with a better quality of life and less loneliness, anxiety, depression and agitation. Many non-residential long term care (LTC) clients rely on support of others to take care of their pets. However, that may place a signifi...

Background Western countries face an aging population and increasing number of people with chronic illnesses. Many countries have shifted from a focus on institutional care to home-based care due to growing healthcare costs and pressure on long-term care. Despite, the increasing difficulty for contemporary family structures to support community-dwe...

Objective Stress and its sequelae are very common in adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) without an intellectual disability (ID). Animal-assisted therapy (AAT) has shown physiological stress-reductive effects in children with ASD. The aim of the current study was to examine the acute psychophysiological response to an AAT session, and to exa...

Introduction: Patients with personality pathology need interventions which include opportunities for intersubjective relations to emerge on both verbal and nonverbal levels [1]. The aim of this study is to investigate if equine-assisted psychotherapy integrated in Short Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy [2, 3] facilitates these nonverbal components...

Social communication and self-esteem are often affected in adults with autism spectrum disorder. Implementation and evaluation of interventions targeting social skills are challenged due to specific characteristics of autism. Intensive, valid evaluation of social skills programs is needed. In this explorative multiple case study, we examined effect...

The growing field of equine-assisted psychotherapy (EAP), a subfield of animal-assisted psychotherapy (AAP), needs theoretically-based clinical studies. This systematic review examines the existing clinical studies in adult populations on psychodynamic psychotherapy combined with equine-assisted psychotherapy. An electronic database search was divi...

The relationship between companion animal ownership and wellbeing has received an increasing amount of scientific attention over the last few decades. Although the general assumption is that individuals benefit from the presence of companion animals (termed the “pet-effect”), recent evidence suggests that the nature of this association is diverse a...

Effective treatments of highly prevalent stress-related outcomes such as depression and anxiety are understudied in adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A randomized controlled trial with baseline, post-intervention, and 10-week follow-up, that explores the effects of animal assisted therapy (AAT) was conducted. In total, 53 adults with ASD...

Violence towards animals and violence towards people are often interconnected problems, and as such, this phenomenon has been termed the Link. Violence towards animals is a strong predictor that the abuser may inflict violence on people. However, it must not be assumed this is always the case. Professionals treating an animal or a human patient/cli...

Background: Epilepsy is associated with a high disease burden, impacting the lives of people with epilepsy and their caregivers and family. Persons with medically refractory epilepsy experience the greatest burden, suffering from profound physical, psychological, and social consequences. Anecdotal evidence suggests these persons may benefit from a...

(1) Background: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are considered the gold standard for evaluating a treatment. However, the results of an RCT may remain meaningless for clinical practice in cases of poor intervention feasibility or fidelity (the extent to which the protocol was executed), or when health care professionals or patients experience t...

Background: Dog-assisted therapy (DAT) is hypothesized to help children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Down syndrome (DS). Methods: The present authors compared synchronous movement patterns of these children (n = 10) and their therapy dogs during the first and last session of a DAT programme, and their post-therapy changes in emotional...

Synchronizing behaviors in interactions, such as during turn-taking, are often impaired in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Therapies that focus on turn-taking generally lead to increased social skills, less interruptions, and silent pauses, however a positive non-demanding environment is therefore thought to be beneficial. Such an environme...

Older adults in most developed countries can now expect to live nearly 80 years without significant disability. To maximize the quality of the years after retirement, societies, governments, and organizations are seeking strategies to help older adults maintain their mental and physical health, and retain their independence. Increasingly, the impac...

Kwetsbare kinderen en adolescenten lopen het gevaar ‘stuk’ te lopen in onze maatschappij, onder meer omdat het hen vaak aan passende begeleiding ontbreekt. Er is niet voor ieder kind een oplossing in de vorm van op hen afgestemd onderwijs, therapie of training die hen kan helpen zich beter in onze maatschappij te handhaven. Wanneer er wel therapie...

Food consumption has considerable impacts on the environment. Recently, increasing numbers of companion animal owners feed their animals with high nutritional food, which requires much land space and has great impacts on carbon emissions. Therefore, the environmental impacts of food consumption by companion animals can be significant, especially in...

Anthrozoology continues to advance forward in research and in professionalization of animal assisted interventions. What the discipline is still lacking, however, is a unified theoretical framework “explaining how and why relationships between humans and animals are potentially therapeutic” ( Kruger & Serpell, 2010 ). We propose such a framework, i...

The need for meaningful activities that enhance engagement is very important among persons with dementia (PWDs), both for PWDs still living at home, as well as for PWDs admitted to a nursing home (NH). In this study, we systematically registered behaviours related to engagement in a group animal-assisted activity (AAA) intervention for 21 PWDs in N...

Meer dan de helft van de Nederlandse gezinnen heeft een huisdier en we weten dat huisdieren veel kunnen betekenen voor mensen. Hoeveel ouderen een huisdier hebben is niet precies bekend. Uit onderzoek is gebleken dat huisdieren kunnen bijdragen aan de kwaliteit van leven van gezonde mensen, maar vooral ook aan die van kwetsbare groepen. Denk in dit...

Background Dementia often eventually leads to dependency on others and finally to residential care. However, in Norway about half of the dementia population lives at home, due to individual and political wishes. There is scarce and inconclusive knowledge of how living in a nursing home differs from living at home for persons with dementia (PWDs) wi...

Unlabelled: Purpose of the study was to examine if animal-assisted activity with a dog (AAA) in home-dwelling persons with dementia (PWDs) attending day-care centers would have an effect on factors related to risk of fall accidents, with balance (Berg balance scale) and quality of life (Quality of Life in Late-stage Dementia) as main outcome. The...

Objectives: Animal-assisted interventions (AAI) have become more and more popular in nursing homes in the past decade. Various initiatives for using animals in nursing homes have been developed over the years (eg, animal visiting programs, residential companion animals, petting zoos) and, on the whole, the number of nursing homes that refuse anima...

Objectives: The prevalence of neuropsychiatric symptoms in cognitively impaired nursing home residents is known to be very high, with depression and agitation being the most common symptoms. The possible effects of a 12-week intervention with animal-assisted activities (AAA) in nursing homes were studied. The primary outcomes related to depression...

There is a growing body of scientific evidence supporting the existence of emotions in nonhuman animals. Companion-animal owners show a strong connection and attachment to their animals and readily assign emotions to them. In this paper we present information on how the attachment level of companion-animal owners correlates with their attribution o...

Since the first serendipitous findings on the beneficial effects of animals in therapeutic settings, researchers have been investigating the contribution of pets to the quality of life of their owners, and their positive influence on the physical, psychological and social aspects of people’s lives. Animal-assisted interventions (AAI)—that is, any k...

There is a growing awareness of the relationship between animal abuse and domestic violence. In the Netherlands, the topic was unknown until research in 2009 (Enders-Slegers & Jansen) revealed that 60 % of the interviewed veterinarians for pet animals (N = 108) in the Netherlands noticed animal abuse in their practices. In one-third of the cases th...

In young people, interactions with horses may contribute to the development of social skills and self-efficacy. Our aim was to identify relationships between psychological variables and young people's experience of activities with horses. Participants in this study were 13–15-year-old adolescents (n = 25), given a 4-month intervention consisting of...

Cognitive and speech development are delayed in children with Down syndrome (DS). We investigated the effect of dolphin-assisted therapy (DAT), a form of animal-assisted intervention, on the development of speech/language and social behavior in children with DS. We hypothesized that DAT would improve the social and cognitive functions with respect...

This study explored how (learning) experiences offered through outdoor experiential programmes, particularly the youth care farm approach, may (or may not) enhance young peoples' ability to recognise and then utilise available resources for personal growth, protection and health promotion. A total of 11 youngsters were asked to look back on their h...

In this project, we examined the effect of a 4-month intervention with horses on perceived social support, self-esteem and general self-efficacy among Norwegian adolescents aged 12-15 years. The intervention took place at farm-based stables and included work with the horses and riding. A waiting-list crossover design was used and the participants a...

Animal-assisted interventions with farm animals appear to be the most thoroughly studied type of Green care service, which is the use of commercial farms and agricultural landscapes as arenas for promoting human mental and physical health, social inclusion and educational benefits. The main aim of this chapter is to describe different theories and...

Day care at green care farms (GCFs) is a new care modality for community-dwelling older people with dementia. In view of the more physical and normal daily life activities available at GCFs than at RDCFs, we investigated whether functional decline differed between subjects from both day care settings. In this observational cohort study, primary car...

In the Netherlands community-dwelling older people with dementia can attend regular day care services (RDCS). Since approximately 2000, farms (so-called ‘green care farms’) also offer day care. The present study introduces the concept of green care farms for older people with dementia. We further provide an integrative framework for the expected he...

Recentelijk is in Nederland een reeks onderzoeken uitgevoerd naar het effect van gezelschapsdieren op bewoners van zorginstellingen. Projectleider Marie-José Enders-Slegers over de resultaten: ‘Dieren in instellingen kunnen veel voor bewoners betekenen. Ze bieden steun door hun gezelschap, leiden af van ziekte en ongemak, geven plezier en maken men...

Het onderwerp van deze studie is de betekenis van de relatie tussen ouderen en gezelschapsdieren, de effecten ervan op het welzijn van ouderen, het welzijn van de gezelschapsdieren die door ouderen worden gehouden en de invloed van katten op het welzijn van dementerende ouderen in een psychogeriatrisch verpleeghuis. In hoofdstuk 1 wordt het onderwe...