Quasi‐Experimental Single‐Subject Design: Comparing Seeking Safety and Canine‐Assisted Therapy Interventions Among Mentally Ill Female Inmates

Seeking Safety for women in incarceration: a systematic review

PURPOSE

Seeking Safety is an evidence-based treatment for individuals with comorbid posttraumatic stress disorder and substance use disorder. This treatment shows promise to address the unique, unmet needs of women in prison. The current systematic literature review aims to highlight several critical gaps in research on Seeking Safety in forensic settings that need to be filled before Seeking Safety can be implemented in a widespread manner.

METHODS

PsycINFO, PubMed and Google scholar databases were used to identify studies that were published in English, included women in forensic settings, and incorporated Seeking Safety treatment. A total of seven studies met review criteria. The quality of studies was assessed with the mixed methods appraisal tool.

RESULTS

High risk of contamination, inclusion of small, predominantly White samples, high attrition rates, need for dose-response testing, and lack of follow-up data currently limit the ability to assess the efficacy of Seeking Safety in forensic settings. In addition, there is a lack of research on Seeking Safety's ability to reduce symptoms of substance use disorder for incarcerated women and further cultural adaptation may be needed.

CONCLUSION

Seeking Safety has the potential to address the underlying causes of incarceration for justice-involved women, but additional research addressing these identified gaps is needed to facilitate more widespread implementation.

Specific and Non-specific Factors of Animal-Assisted Interventions Considered in Research: A Systematic Review

Research on animal-assisted interventions (AAIs) has increased massively in the last few years. But it is still not clear how AAIs work and how important the animal is in such interventions. The aim of this systematic review was to compile the existing state of knowledge about the working mechanisms of AAIs. We searched 12 major electronic databases for previous AAI studies with active control groups. Of 2001 records identified, we included 172 studies in the systematic review. We extracted previously published hypotheses about working mechanisms and factors that have been implicitly considered specific or non-specific in AAI research by categorizing control conditions using content analysis. We analyzed the categories using descriptive statistics. We found that 84% of the included studies mentioned a hypothesis of working mechanisms, but 16% did not define specific hypotheses. By analyzing their control conditions, we found that in most controlled studies, the animal or the interaction with the animal was implicitly considered as a specific factor for the effects of the AAI. Non-specific factors such as therapeutic aspects, social interactions, or novelty have also been controlled for. We conclude that AAI research still cannot answer the question of how and why AAIs work. To address this important research gap, we suggest using component studies with innovative control conditions and results from placebo research to address both the specific and non-specific, contextual factors of AAIs to disentangle its mechanisms.

Systematic Review Registration

https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=158103, identifier: CRD42020158103.