Robotic Dogs and Laughter Therapy

During the middle of the pandemic, there were new measures to counter the loneliness and social isolation faced by the elderly. The results of *PLOS ONE* were published by a team at Cambridge’s School of Medicine when they carried out a pre-pandemic systematic review, looking at the existing evidence on the different approaches to solve this issue.

In the UK, strict measures of social distancing were advised to the public. Inevitably, the elderly living in the residential homes would experience the problem of social isolation and loneliness. Furthermore, there has also been strong evidence to prove that both social isolation and loneliness, are linked to cardiovascular disease, depression, and many more. Due to these circumstances, there was an urgent need to discover effective measures to solve this problem

Led by Dr. Christopher Williams, a team of individuals identified various studies which could solve this issue, to aid people living in pandemic-related isolation. Within these studies, they discovered that majority of the people affected by the lockdown and isolation protocols, were the elderly. Adding onwards, two of these studies indicated that a robotic dog's coil, can be as effective as real dog's. Hence, the concluded that these robotic dogs, had the potential to reduce loneliness. In fact, they were also more accessible than real dogs, for many during the worst outbreaks of the pandemic.

Apart from the robotic dog project, many turned to laughing therapy. It involves basic laughing and deep breathing exercises, playing games, singing songs loudly, and laughter meditation. Ultimately, laughing therapy has also been able to reduce loneliness, while bringing joy into the lives of multitudes.

*PLOS ONE*= "The Public Library of Science (PLOS) was founded in 2001 as a nonprofit organization to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication."

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Sources:

Christopher Y. K. Williams, Adam T. Townson, Milan Kapur, Alice F. Ferreira, Rebecca Nunn, Julieta Galante, Veronica Phillips, Sarah Gentry, Juliet A. Usher-Smith. Interventions to reduce social isolation and loneliness during COVID-19 physical distancing measures: A rapid systematic review. PLOS ONE, 2021; 16 (2): e0247139 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0247139

https://plos.org/publish/publishing-faqs/#:~:text=What%20does%20PLOS%20stand%20for,a%20transformation%20in%20research%20communication.