Pet Therapy May Help Schizophrenic Patients

"In a pilot randomized controlled trial a group of researchers of the Technion Institute of Technology (Israel) suggest the usefulness of pet therapy for improving apathy in schizophrenic patients. The paper was published in the January issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics."

"The hedonic tone of 10 chronic schizophrenia patients who participated in 10 weekly interactive sessions of Animal-Assisted Therapy was compared to a control group treated without animal assistance. The hedonic tone was measured with the Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale."

You are my little Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale! I weigh 800 hedons on a Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale! This sounds like an appliance marketed on Sims BUY mode.

Now look up "animal assisted therapy" AAT and tell me what exactly you have to do to make it count as therapy? Only if you get the cat purring does it count as therapy? Or only if the consumer purrs? Can the Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale be used to measure Gross Domestic Happiness? Should be Gross Domestic Affect.

Exercise: Write a caption for this photo of a kitten from the front page of animaltherapy.net.