Though popular across many audiences, engagement with a service dog has undergone limited empirical evaluation as a complementary or alternative treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The present study took advantage of a service dog training intervention underway in a Department of Veterans Affairs residential PTSD treatment program to perform a within-subjects comparison of a range of phenotypic markers. The present report considers negative and positive affect, assessed throughout the day, contrasting weeks when participants were or were not accompanied by their service dog. Fifty-four veterans were studied for 2-6 weeks. Negative and positive affect were sampled five times per day using items from the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. Participants also wore a single-patch ECG/activity recorder and slept on beds recording sleep actigraphically. Linear mixed effects regression was employed to estimate the effect of the presence of service dog on momentary affect in the context of other presumable influences. Missing data were managed using methods applicable to random and nonrandom missingness. In this sample, the presence of a service dog was associated with reduced negative and increased positive affect, with both effects diminishing over time. Only negative affect was associated with time in residential treatment, and only positive affect was associated with concurrent heart rate, activity, and the interaction of activity and prior-night actigraphic sleep efficiency. These results concur with prior reports of reduced PTSD symptomology in association with the presence of a service dog, and with the distinct neurocircuitries underlying defensive and appetitive emotion and motivation. Limitations derive from the artificial environment and brief duration of study. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

---

在服务犬干预期间跟踪 PTSD 住院患者的积极和消极影响。

尽管在许多观众中很受欢迎，但作为创伤后应激障碍 (PTSD) 的补充或替代疗法，与服务犬的接触经历了有限的实证评估。本研究利用退伍军人事务部住宅 PTSD 治疗计划中正在进行的服务犬训练干预，对一系列表型标记进行受试者内比较。本报告考虑了消极和积极的影响，全天评估，对比参与者有或没有服务犬陪伴的几周。对 54 名退伍军人进行了为期 2-6 周的研究。使用正面和负面影响表中的项目，每天对负面和正面影响进行五次抽样。参与者还佩戴了单贴心电图/活动记录器，睡在床上，通过活动图记录睡眠。采用线性混合效应回归来估计服务犬的存在对其他可能影响背景下的瞬时影响的影响。使用适用于随机和非随机缺失的方法管理缺失数据。在这个样本中，服务犬的存在与消极影响的减少和积极影响的增加有关，随着时间的推移，这两种影响都会减弱。只有负面影响与住院治疗时间相关，只有正面影响与同步心率、活动以及活动与前一晚活动记录睡眠效率的相互作用相关。这些结果与之前的报告一致，即与服务犬的存在相关的 PTSD 症状减少，以及防御和食欲情绪和动机背后的独特神经回路。局限性来自人工环境和短暂的学习时间。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2021 APA，保留所有权利）。