Service Animals Can Help
Alleviate Depression
by Dave Morton
The doctor’s letter reads, “Meghan Saweikis is my patient.
I am treating her for a chronic medical disability. Meghan uses a
service dog to assist her in managing this disability, and I support
her in doing so. Please accommodate Meghan and her specially trained
service dog, Nadia, as needed.” Additional information from
her doctor might have read like this: “Meghan was treated for
3 years with talk therapy and medication, but progress was minimal.
When I suggested that she get a dog, and have it trained as a psychiatric
service dog, the results were dramatic. She’s still taking
medication, but with the dog added to her treatment protocol, she’s
now doing well.”
Fiction? Fantasy? No!
This story demonstrates how bonding with animals— primarily
dogs—can help alleviate depression and give persons struggling
with mental illness a reason for living. Saweikis’ case goes
beyond depression and bonding. Her dog, Nadia, a German shepherd,
is a “psychiatric service dog” (PSD), which was trained
for 18 months to perform such tasks as waking her when she’s
having a nightmare and shielding her from people who approach too
closely. But the bonding is key. For her and others in similar circumstances,
half the “medicine” for daily living is her bond with
the dog. As she relates, “Nadia gets me out of bed when I wouldn’t
otherwise leave my house.”
Four categories of dogs provide support for emotional problems,
including depression.
A pet dog brings psychological
benefits almost immediately to its new owner. The fastest and easiest
route to emotional support from a dog is to acquire one as a pet.
It’s important to budget
for the time, effort, and expense! For those who need more than a
pet, service training of the pet may be a possibility, depending
upon the dog’s temperament and trainability.
A therapy dog is sometimes
used in group homes. Beth Stopka works as a direct care specialist
at a group home in the Minneapolis area. Her four female clients
have various mental and physical disabilities ranging from severe
mental retardation to depression and schizophrenia. Stopka advocates
using animals to help such persons, as does the company’s management, which keeps a golden retriever named “Camp” on
staff. “When the main office sends the dog over for an hour
to be with the clients, the beneficial effects last all day,” says
Stopka. Therapy dogs are also used in such institutional settings
as in-patient mental health facilities, “partial” outpatient
programs, individual therapists’ offices, even nursing homes.
Such dogs are often an indispensable source of comfort and stability
for those who interact with them.
Emotional support dogs (ESDs) or other emotional support animals
(ESAs) and psychiatric service dogs (PSDs) are additional types of
canines that a psychiatrist may recommend to lend support to persons
with mental health issues. The help they provide is similar to that
given by dogs for the blind, deaf and physically disabled, except
that the aid is emotional rather than physical. The Americans with
Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) defines a service dog as one that
is individually trained to do work or perform tasks that benefit
persons with a disability. PSDs are useful for people suffering from
major depression, anxiety, agoraphobia, autism, post traumatic stress
disorder and other psychiatric conditions. A PSD may only be used
by persons with a disability, as defined by the ADA, and when the
severity of their symptoms requires a highly skilled form of canine
assistance.
State and federal laws
govern public use and access with service dogs. However, general
ignorance of the ADA by gatekeepers of public access, coupled with
the seeming absence of the law and the lack of a government-issued
ID tag for the dog cause many PSD owners grief when they attempt
to enter restaurants, movie theaters, etc., and find themselves
and their dogs illegally barred from entry. An emotional support
animal (ESA), in contrast to a PSD, is not necessarily trained
and may be used for companionship and calming physical presence
more than anything else. Under the Fair Housing Act, persons with
disabilities may have an “emotional support animal,” even in no-pets
housing. In contrast to emotional support dogs, therapy dogs and
pets, a psychiatric service dog (PSD) must be owned and operated
by a single disabled individual. Joan Esnayra, Ph.D., who coined
the phrase “psychiatric service dog” and founded the
Psychiatric Service Dog Society (www.psychdog.org), contrasts pet
ownership with PSD ownership: “The real medicine of PSD ownership
is the relationship or bond that the owner enjoys with the dog. With
a PSD, the relationship is 24/7. This ‘joined-at-the-hip’ lifestyle
fosters a stronger, more therapeutic bond than one gets from occasional
interactions with a family pet.”
Thirty-three-year-old
Carey Ivey, of Dayton, Ohio, says the 24/7 relationship is crucial. “Medication, therapy, exercise, and
two pet dogs, whom I love dearly, didn’t help enough,” she
notes. “With Asta [her rottweiler PSD], I’ve been able
to return to college part time— a dream I’ve had since
high school. Asta is my rock. She performs special tasks, and gives
me emotional, physical and psychiatric support. I can’t imagine
life without her.” Asta was Ivey’s pet before she decided
to train her dog to be a PSD. The pairing has worked so well, she’s
even been able to reduce her medication dosages “…with
my doctor’s approval, of course!”
PSD owner Brenda Bryant,
44, of Aurora, CO, comments, “One
symptom of major depression is lethargy. But when you take on the
commitment of caring for your dog, you are forced to take on its
needs, feedings, bathroom breaks, and playtimes. You gain from this,
and your depressed phases aren’t so low as before.”
See the table below for examples of the tasks a PSD may be trained
to perform.
As for training, “It’s a two-way street,” says
Esnayra. “At first, the owner trains the dog, but over time
the dog begins to train the owner—cultivating the owner’s
insight and body-awareness of developing mental health symptoms.” The
unconditional love from a dog—sometimes coupled with training—can
make a tremendous difference in the happiness and quality of life
for many people. And I’ll just bet that all that love flows
right back to the dog—don’t you think?
"Dogs Can Help Alleviate
Depression" by
Dave Morton is reprinted with permission from SAVE-Suicide Awareness
Voices of Education.
