Stuffed animals may ease war-related stress in kids

By Joene Hendry

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Caring for a stuffed animal appears to alleviate stress signs in young children exposed to traumatic or stressful life events, Israeli researchers report.

"Shifting attention from oneself to others can be very healthy for individuals under stressful times," Dr. Avi Sadeh of Tel Aviv University noted in comments to Reuters Health.

Sadeh and colleagues tested whether giving war-stressed children a toy to care for would ease the stress reactions from their exposure to the month-long 2006 conflict between the Israeli Defense Forces and Hezbollah in northern Israel and southern Lebanon.

During the last three days of this conflict, the investigators provided 40 boys and 34 girls, who were about 5 years old on average, with a stuffed, cocker spaniel-type toy, called the Huggy-Puppy, with long legs that enabled the children to wrap the toy around their arms or legs.

The children, who were living with their families in a shelter camp, were told the puppy was sad because he was far from home, didn't have friends, and needed a care from a buddy. Their parents were encouraged to remind them of this responsibility.

Parental reports indicated that nearly 83 percent of these children had experienced one or more symptom of severe stress, such as separation fears; nervousness or aggression; strong reactions to noise; excessive crying; or nightmares and trouble sleeping, the researchers report in the journal Pediatrics.

In assessments three weeks after receiving their puppy, the children with the strongest attachment to their toy had lower stress levels.

Sadeh and colleagues further tested the intervention by randomly selecting similarly-stressed kindergarten-age children to either receive the intervention or not.

Follow up two months later showed that 71 percent of the intervention group was free of severe stress reactions, compared with 39 percent of the 101 children who served as controls.

"This cost-effective intervention requires minimal professional resources and can serve as a strategic intervention in situations where many children are exposed to traumatic events such as war and September 11," Sadeh told Reuters Health.

He and colleagues have launched a series of similar studies to test the efficacy of the Huggy-Puppy intervention among children undergoing other life crises.

SOURCE: Pediatrics, January 2008