Family and pet support and mental health: The mediating roles of perceived stress and emotional approach coping

• Main Author: Acoba, Evelyn F.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2023
• Subjects: Families; Pets; Mental health; Emotional support animals; Clinical Psychology
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdd_psych/4; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etdd_psych/article/1006/viewcontent/2023_Acobe_Family_and_Pet_Support_and_Mental_Health_Full_text.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

Social support has been associated with improved mental health; however, the mechanisms underlying this relationship remain unclear. This study aimed to explore whether perceived stress and emotional approach coping mediate the relationship between family and pet support and positive affect, anxiety, and depression. Drawing from Lazarus and Folkman's stress and coping theory, the study emphasized the influential role of social support in appraising stressful events and determining coping strategies. A cross-sectional survey was conducted online with 372 Filipino adult pet owners. Participants completed measures including the Family subscale of the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), the Comfort from Companion Animal Scale (CCAS), the Perceived Stress Scale-10 (PSS-10), Emotional Approach Coping (EAC), the Positive Affect subscale of PANAS, and the Depression and Anxiety subscales of DASS-21. The hypotheses of the study were tested using parallel mediation analysis. Consistent with the hypotheses, perceived stress significantly mediated the relationship between family support and positive affect, anxiety, and depression. Similarly, emotional approach coping significantly mediated the relationship between family support and positive affect, but not anxiety and depression. Regarding pet support, emotional approach coping significantly mediated the association between pet support and positive affect and depression, but not anxiety. Perceived stress did not mediate the association between pet support and positive affect, anxiety, and depression. While both perceived stress and emotional approach coping were identified as significant mediators, perceived stress emerged as the stronger mechanism accounting for family support's impact on individuals' mental health. On the other hand, emotional approach coping appeared to be a stronger mechanism explaining pet support's influence on individuals' mental health. Implications and future research directions are discussed. Keywords: Family support, pet support, perceived stress, emotional approach coping, mental health, and Covid-19 pandemic