SRU Professor Christopher Streidl helps people through various types of research studies that he conducts. This is Streidl’s third year at SRU in the Social Work program.
He was originally an education major at the University of Toledo, but ended up graduating with a bachelors in social work and a masters at Wayne State University in Detroit where he learned to be a therapist.
Streidl got his PhD in 2020. He really enjoyed teaching and knew that was something he wanted to do.
“[I] was really lucky, because I ended up finding a field that I really fell in love with,” Streidl said.
Like various SRU professors, Streidl loves therapy dogs and works with them often.
He has his own therapy dog named Watson who visits campus on occasion. Watson is seven years old and has been a therapy dog for years.
After seeing how much of an impact a golden retriever therapy dog made on clients at Streidl’s work before he started teaching, he realized just how helpful these dogs can be.
“Just watching the stress and anxiety kind of melt away from clients when they came to the waiting room and saw Caleb [the therapy dog] and how they interact with him, how they pet him. It was just really neat to see. That was the first time I had seen the true impact you can have with animal assisted interventions,” Streidl said. “And it doesn’t change the way the psychiatrist is providing services. Doesn’t change the way I am as clinician, but it does change the experience for the people.”
Streidl brings Watson into certain classes to explain to students how he impacts others. He will often visit campus for other events and occasions as well.
The professor does multiple different research studies, with a recent focus on animal-assisted interventions.
He has worked with a few other professors to get results on his research. In a recent study, Streidl and another professor looked into the impact of bringing in therapy dogs to veterinary staff during an emergency setting.
A lot of the time animals do not have good interactions with veterinary staff since they are usually sick or nervous. This study was to show how therapy dogs could help the staff who are often under a lot of stress.
The professors wanted to look at how therapy dogs can affect the veterinary staff stress levels and their blood pressure.
“We wanted to see if it helped people just kind of destress and it did,” Streidl said. “[A]ll it took was a minimum of five minutes in there with the dogs, and we saw statistically significant effect.”
Streidl has worked on various research studies with other professors. Some studies included working with one of the local jails and another involved animal-assisted parenting groups.
When asked why Streidl is interested in this type of research, he stated, “I did a long time as a therapist, and in that time, you recognize there are some people it’s just harder for them to engage in traditional talk therapy,” Streidl said. “It’s hard for them to express themselves. Talking about feelings is never the most fun thing in the world.”
Streidl currently has a study coming up that is focused on the inclusion of board and tabletop roleplaying games into therapy.
“[I]t makes it more enjoyable. The research behind it helps students retain information, helps them engage. So those are awesome things,” Streidl said.
“I recognized at some point that work can be about stuff that I really love. So, spending my time working on Animal Assisted Interventions, working on the application of like, board games, tabletop games, if that could be the big part of my job, why would I not want to do that,” Streidl said.
In Streidl’s newest research he will be working with another professor, and they will be designing a study together.
“So currently, what I’m planning is a grounded theory study. So, there are quite a few articles out there that show some promising results. I can’t say it’s evidence based yet cause there haven’t been enough, but promising results for the use of like tabletop role playing games, so things like Dungeons and Dragons in therapy to help people get change grounded theory looks at why something happens. What exactly is the mechanism that’s like making this work,” Streidl said.
The professors’ plan would be to bring in one or two small groups of SRU students to try the study.
“I taught a class on this topic over the summer as an experimental course for our graduate program. So, it’s something that I’m really interested in,” Streidl said.
“When you design a therapeutic tabletop roleplaying game, you are really designing the entire thing around the clients that you have getting benefit. So, whereas if I’m running a Dungeon and Dragons campaign for friends, I might have an idea for my story arc, but the story is kind of everything. And we build it together. When I have a therapeutic tabletop role playing game, my story arc is designing is being designed to help them,” Streidl said.
This gives the client the ability to practice the skill to work on but in a different way.
Streidl will get more into this research throughout the semester, and he hopes to continue for a long time. He will also continue to work with therapy dogs.
