While dogs have always been known to bring people endless loads of joy, it’s only recently that research has proven that dogs can medically help patients with mental illness. As many of these patients suffer from stress and anxiety, through animal-assisted therapy, trained animals can interact with the patients to help them reach their therapeutic goals. Accompanied by their owners or trained professionals, the animals are used for animal-assisted therapy sessions that can vary for patients, from one time visits with the dogs to regular visits with structured activities. After these sessions, patients often notice decreasing levels of emotional stress as well as physical pain due to anxiety.

It has been proven that animal-assisted therapy can have positive influences on patients’ mental health by rapidly and efficiently decreasing their levels of stress and anxiety. In a recent study, 313 adult psychiatric patients underwent multiple sessions of animal-assisted therapy as well as multiple sessions of therapeutic recreation sessions where there were no animals present. After trying the sessions, the patients were asked to compare the two through self-reports to see which was more beneficial in relieving their stress and anxiety. In their responses it was found that the majority of patients with mood disorders and psychotic disorders found a major decrease in stress and anxiety following their interactions with the dogs. Further, it was found that most commonly, the dogs’ calming nature was a key component to the decrease in patients’ stress. As well, the responses showed that for patients struggling with schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety, animal-assisted therapy allowed them to find ways to become grounded, comforted, and allowed them to communicate and interact with another being in a non-threatening space, all factors helping them find peace of mind.

In addition to the emotional afflictions stress and anxiety can cause, when they become constant, they can also cause damaging physical complications to the body. Majoritarily, stress and anxiety can lead to serious cardiovascular issues that may lead to disease or heart attack. However, studies have found that not only do pet owners have longer survival rates following heart attacks, but they also have lower blood pressure than non-pet-owners. Consequently, being exposed to calming animals could greatly increase one’s physical health.

Overall, animal-assisted therapy offers both physical as well as emotional relief for patients struggling with mental illness. As animal-assisted therapy offers an interaction that involves fewer demands compared with most other forms of therapy, for those who can’t have pets at home, animal assisted therapy might be the best new “medicine” for relieving stress and anxiety.

Written with information from Psychiatric Services’ article “The effects of animal-assisted therapy on anxiety ratings of hospitalized psychiatric patients.”

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Catherine Morrison is a Gender, Sexuality, Feminism, and Social Justice student at McGill University. Co-Founder and Executive Editor of The Why Intersection, McGill’s First Satire Magazine, she has a passion for writing and hopes to one day be a journalist.

One month ago, the Trump administration sent out a completed legal proposal, which has been approved this past week and will dramatically weaken environmental regulations regarding the emissions of mercury, a very toxic chemical that is emitted from coal-burning power plants.

Despite the many discriminatory and offensive political actions he has proposed, Trump claims that this next one will make up for all of his wrongdoings and benefit our entire galaxy.

“Mercury is hands down the best planet,” Trump said. “I think it’s super lame that is has to follow so many dumb rules and regulations just because humans want it to.”

Though the legal proposal would not completely eliminate mercury regulation laws, it will allow many companies in the United States to ruin our dying planet a lot quicker for their own monetary benefit.

“I never even thought about the fact that this means we get to burn more coal!” Trump exclaimed in a recent interview about the proposal. “My good friends at Cloud Peak Energy, one of the top coal-mining companies in the United States, will be so excited to hear about this!”

If you are opposed to this proposal and would like to have your say in keeping our environment safe, please sign the “Stop Trump’s mercury Proposal” petition at www.change.org/stop-trumps-mercury-proposal and donate to this important cause.

As Winter approaches, peoples seem to be getting confused about the weather. They’re wondering if it’s still acceptable to dress for Fall weather or have we reached the point of needing to wear Winter clothes? Regardless of what people decide to wear, be is Winter jack of Fall coat, there is one fashion choice that needs to be stopped. The combination of socks and
sandals needs to come to an end. We believe that in making their footwear choice, people need to realize that either it’s warm enough for sandals or it’s cool enough for socks and shoes. It’s never both at the same time. In ensuring that this disturbing pairing of garmen

ts choice come to an end, we demand that the Government of Canada pas bill SNS321 enforcing the criminalization of all people wearing socks and sandals. It is essential that this bill be passed as not only is the fashion choice excruciatingly painful to the eye, but it has recently caused major disruptions in Universities across Canada. In fact, a McGill University student was recently a victim of such a sight and needed to take personal time off her studies to recuperate from the incident.

“A student in one of my Political Science conferences was wearing big green socks with his Birkenstock sandals,” the student said. “I tried to avoid looking at them but they were too distracting. At the sight of the combination, I got so disgusted that I had to run out of the building. His actions not only pained me, 

but forced me to miss valuable time working on my education. For this reason, I support the criminalization of socks and sandals.”

If you too have been a victim of socks and sandals sightseeing, please sign below to show the Canadian Government the urgency of criminalizing socks and sandals. Together we can end this fashion trend for good.

With the first episode airing on September 25th, 2018, long-time YouTuber Shane Dawson’s series “The Mind of Jake Paul” has caused major controversy in the two weeks it’s been on Youtube. Though Dawson has been active on YouTube since 2008, it is only in 2015 that he started his conspiracy show on YouTube. The most popular of the series has now become “The Mind of Jake Paul,” a series which analyses the life of fellow YouTuber Jake Paul, who has been active on the social media platform since 2013. Having faced multiple lawsuits and major backlash from his community, Jake Paul is known for his destructive and shocking pranks, which Paul airs on YouTube. As Paul has recently become an internet sensation, Dawson decided to make a series on Paul’s life in order to see what about his personality has led to his rise in fame. With over 30 million views, the “The Mind of Jake Paul” series has reached international audiences. Through studying Paul’s past and his family, Dawson attempts to discover the type of personality a YouTuber and social media influencer needs to have in order to attract and influence their viewers.

Though the series has become very popular among youth and has been cited as quite entertaining, many viewers have described the series as dangerous and offensive as in describing the personality a YouTuber needs to have, Dawson has approached the topics of “sociopathy” and of general mental illness in a problematic way. In the series, Shane Dawson’s main goal is to find an answer to his research question which asks if Paul engages in reckless actions for the entertainment of his YouTube following because he is a “sociopath.” In order to answer this question, Dawson analyses archival footage of Jake Paul and his family, interviews Paul’s friends, girlfriend, and ex-girlfriend, and consults with therapist Kati Morton. Dawson’s research is somewhat equitable as learns about Paul and of “sociopathy” from different perspectives. However, his research question of if Paul is a “sociopath” seems to become more hypothesis as the series goes on, and consequently, Dawson begins to nitpick the information he gathers in order to problematically diagnose Paul with the mental illness.

Further, while entertaining, Shane Dawson’s series’ blunt sensonalizational approach to diagnosing Jake Paul with such a stigmatized mental illness for the sole purpose of entertainment is highly offensive and problematic. In addition to being harmful for everyone struggling with antisocial personality disorder (the real term for “sociopath,” which Dawson mislabels in the series), Dawson’s series’ dark approach to discussing the mental illness is offensive to many people who advocate for the de-stigmatization of mental illnesses.

Though the series in general has received major backlash, in my opinion the second episode, “The Dark Side of Jake Paul,” is the most dangerous and offensive. In this episode, Dawson meets with therapist Kati Morton to learn about the characteristics that people with antisocial personality disorder demonstrate. While not needing additional dramatization while editing the video, Dawson decided to include scary images to dramatize and add terror the scene. In addition, he includes offensive statements made by Morton such as “It’s gross” and “After talking to [someone with antisocial personality disorder] you just want to go take a shower.” By presenting the disorder in such a negative light and shaping viewers’ idea of antisocial personality disorder as something scary and inherently harmful, Dawson is countering much of the advancement society has made in normalizing and de-stigmatizing mental illness for youth as many people who watch Dawson’s videos on YouTube will be introduced to the disorder in a negative light.
As well, in the series, Shane Dawson uses language that does not accurately represent the mental illness he is trying to analyze and to frame Jake Paul as having. Throughout the 5 parts of the series which have been released so far, Shane uses the outdated term “sociopath,” which, according to the American Psychological Association, is outdated and does not accurately represent antisocial personality disorder. Though he has received numerous accounts of feedback informing him of this mistake, Dawson continues to misrepresent and mislabel the mental illness.

In acknowledging the negative feedback Dawson has received for the series, the YouTube personality has justified his portrayal of mental illness for entertainment purposes. In a recent apology made on Snapchat on September 28th, Dawson described his intentions in making the series by stating that the illness interests him and isn’t discussed enough. However, he doesn’t recognize that the way he is discussing it is harmful and isolates anyone with mental illness.

“My intentions were to make something interesting, to show a side of personality disorders that nobody talks about because they’re too afraid to,” Dawson said.

Though seeming sincere, the apology did not justify Dawson’s harmful approach on the issue of mental illness and the damage he has done in perpetuating misperceptions to an audience who is likely being introduced to the details of antisocial personality disorder for the first time through these videos.

In addition, in the series, Dawson draws on his own experiences with mental illness to justify his actions. Though it’s valid to want to share his own experience with mental illness, Dawson must realize the ways in which he is stigmatizing mental illness as “scary” and “gross” as said by Morton. For years, many advocates of mental health issues have been working together to de-stigmatize mental illness, and if Dawson wants to support people experiencing these types of illnesses, he needs to present all mental illnesses in a non-dangerous way.

Lastly, though Jake Paul has been responsible for many accounts of physical damage to his neighbourhood in Los Angeles, Shane Dawson’s armchair approach to diagnosing Jake Paul, and his general representations of mental illness, has the potential to be more globally harmful as his misrepresentation of antisocial personality disorder has the power to impact education on this mental issue across a wide array of international audiences.