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Volunteers from Pets As Therapy (PAT), a national charity that provides animal-assisted therapeutic visits, spend time in hospitals, hospices, residential care homes, schools and universities across the UK. PAT Teams also visit 35 prisons to give prisoners the chance to interact with a friendly dog — and suicide attempts and instances of self-harm have reduced as a result.

The charity has found that therapeutic sessions with a PAT Dog can shift a person’s outlook. Some prisoners have struggled in their informative years or come from broken families and not experienced love in their life. Others have violent pasts. PAT Dogs seem to help prisoners explore new ways of expressing and processing their emotions. The four-legged friends provide a sense of connection to the ‘outside world’, and staff at prisons have noted significant improvements in the overall mental health of prisoners.
https://petsastherapy.org/