Owning or being around pets can be beneficial to anyone at any age. Since the 1970s, emphasis has been placed on the use of animal therapy to treat many mental disorders and conditions (Moretti, 2011, p. 125). Everyone has probably experienced stress in their lives, in one way or another. Children, adults and the elderly all face stress, but not to the same degree or for the same causes. Studies have been done on children and elderly patients to determine whether animal-assisted therapy is a good option for reducing stress and other mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, and dementia. A study done proved that there was significant improvement in children with several different disorders who were subjected to animal-assisted therapy (Tsai, 2010, p. 245). Elderly patients suffering from dementia, anxiety and depression have also shown significant signs of improvement with pet therapy (Moretti, 2011, p. 128). Students experience a lot of stress due to the pressure of school, work, and many other factors. Animal-assisted therapy could be a useful tool to effectively reduce students' stress levels. This form of therapy has been used in many other studies, with several different populations, and has been observed to evaluate its usefulness in several ways, including decreasing mental disorders, improving mood, and reducing blood pressure. Using pet therapy among students to reduce anxiety and depression could be a good form of interactive therapy. Rachael A. Jasperson (2013) examined the effectiveness of animal-assisted therapy (AAT) on distress levels, interpersonal relationships, and social role performance. Jasperson (2013), using women incarcerated in the Utah State Prison, studied using an experiment...... middle of paper... in adults. Animal-assisted therapy could be used to help adults manage stress in a new and fun way. One threat to validity is that this is a small study and a few people dropped out of both groups, which could affect the results. In future studies, larger groups of participants could be used and other therapies could be compared to AAT. Animal-assisted therapy could have a significant effect on people's well-being, such as depression, anxiety, mental disorders and overall happiness. Larger, longer studies may help better represent the results than those listed. We hope to determine if animal-assisted therapy is a good form of therapy to use on students suffering from anxiety and depression. It is hypothesized that students placed in animal-assisted therapy, compared to those in the control group, will exhibit lower anxiety and depression scores..