What Does a Psychiatric Service Dog Do?

Service dogs are dogs that are trained to perform tasks that mitigate disabilities for people with serious disabilities. Psychiatric service dogs perform tasks to assist people with psychiatric disabilities, including depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, and schizophrenia. I have post-traumatic stress disorder and my service dog Isaac does a number of tasks to help me. The specific tasks a psychiatric service dogs does depend on the needs of the person the dog assists.

Medication Reminders

Psychiatric service dogs often remind people to take their medications. One person I know tends to forget to take his daily medications and so his service reminds him to take his pills every day at sunrise and sunset. I usually remember my own medication, but sometimes when I am having an anxiety attack, I am unable to think clearly and then I forget to take the medicine that will relieve my anxiety. Isaac brings my medicine to me when I begin to have an anxiety attack, which reminds me to take it.

Interrupting Compulsive Behaviors

Psychiatric service dogs can be trained to interrupt compulsive behaviors, like hair pulling (trichotillomania) or picking at the skin (dermatillomania). When I’m feeling very anxious, I tend to pick at my skin, especially picking at scabs. My service dog is trained to nudge my hand away when I start to pick at my skin. He will continue nudging my hand, more and more insistently, until I stop.

Determining if Something is a Hallucination or Real

People with conditions like schizophrenia may have hallucinations. Psychiatric service dogs can be trained to help people determine if something is a hallucination or if it’s real. For instance, dogs can be trained to greet people on command. If someone thinks he sees someone come into the room, he can give his service dog the command to greet the person. If it’s really a hallucination, the dog won’t greet that. Instead, the dog will look a bit confused, and the dog’s owner will know he was hallucinating.

Other Tasks

Psychiatric service dogs can perform many other tasks, depending on the needs of the person with a disability. For instance, my service dog turns on lights for me, because my PTSD causes me to be afraid to walk into a dark room. My service dog is also trained to move in a circle around me to create a bit of a boundary around me if I’m in a crowded place and people are too close to me. I know someone that sometimes has anxiety attacks in public places, like stores, and when that happens, her service dog leads her to the exit so she can calm down outside where it’s not so crowded. These are just a few of the other tasks psychiatric service dogs might be trained to perform.

Emotional Support

Dogs provide emotional support to many people with conditions like depression and anxiety disorders. Simply petting a dog or spending time with a dog can be relaxing and take someone’s mind off his troubles. However, this is not a task that a dog must be trained to do, so psychiatric service dogs must do other things to help people with disabilities. Simply providing emotional support isn’t enough.

Encourage Physical Activity

Dogs also encourage their owners to get more physical activity because dogs need to go for regular walks. For years my doctors and therapists had been encouraging me to get more exercise but I didn’t actually do that until I got my service dog. Isaac loves to go for long walks and now I take him for two or three 20 to 30 minute walks every day. However, taking walks isn’t a task dogs have to be trained to do, so psychiatric service dogs have to do other things to help people with disabilities.

Would You Benefit from a Psychiatric Service Dog?

Most people are familiar with the concept of a service dog, or guide dog, for the blind. Service dogs can help people with many other types of disabilities, too, including those with psychiatric disabilities.

People with psychiatric conditions like depression and anxiety often find that having a pet like a dog makes them feel better, but relying on a dog for comfort or affection doesn’t make it a service dog. That’s usually referred to as an emotional support animal, and emotional support animals can be very beneficial to people with psychiatric disabilities, but they are essentially pets. Service dogs are actually trained to perform tasks to help people with psychiatric disabilities, and the Americans with Disabilities Act grants disabled people the right to take their service dogs into public places where pets are normally not permitted, like stores and restaurants. You cannot take an emotional support animal into most public places, however.

So would you benefit from a psychiatric service dog?

Are You Disabled?

To qualify for a psychiatric service dog, you must be disabled in accordance with the definition of disability given under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). That means you must be substantially limited with regard to at least one major life activity; major life activities include things like seeing, hearing, communicating, walking, breathing and thinking. Many people are diagnosed with things like depression or anxiety but are not disabled according to this definition. Even if you receive disability benefits, you may not meet the ADA definition of disability. Talk to your mental health care provider if you aren’t sure if you are considered disabled or not.

Are There Tasks a Dog Could Be Trained to Do that Would Mitigate Your Disability?

A service dog must be trained to do specific tasks that mitigate your disability. Essentially, the dog must be trained to do things for you that you cannot do for yourself because of your disability. For instance, if you take medication for your condition that sedates you so much that you sleep through an alarm clock, a service dog could be trained to wake you up and make sure you get up when the alarm clock goes off. However, if you are able to get up by yourself when the alarm goes off, you do not need a service dog for that task.

To figure out if there are a tasks a service dog could be trained to do to mitigate your disability, make a list of the things you cannot do for yourself because of your disability. Think about how a dog might be able to do those things for you. Talk to your mental health care provider if you aren’t sure if there are tasks a service dog could do for you.

Are You Able to Care for a Dog?

There are some programs that provide service dogs free of charge to people with disabilities. Other programs charge fees for their services. Even if you work with a program that charges no fees, though, caring for a dog can be costly. You’ll be responsible for food, toys and accessories, veterinary care and other services for your service dog. Insurance companies usually won’t cover the cost of caring for a service dog. If you cannot afford to care for a dog, then a service dog is not a good option for you.

Your service dog will need to be fed and walked daily. He will require regular exercise. It’s important that service dogs be groomed regularly since they will accompany their handlers into various public places. Handlers also need to keep up with their dogs’ training or the dogs’ skills may begin to decline. If you don’t have the time or ability to care for a dog, then a service dog is not a good option for you.

Where Can You Take Your Psychiatric Service Dog?

Psychiatric service dogs are dogs that are trained to perform specific tasks to help people with psychiatric disabilities, such as anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder and schizophrenia. The specific tasks performed by psychiatric service dogs depend on the needs of their handlers, but Service Dog Central explains that tasks may include things like reminding them to take medication, interrupting them if they engage in compulsive behaviors, helping them determine if something is real or a hallucination, and helping them find their way home if they get disoriented. Some people with psychiatric disabilities rely on dogs or other pets for companionship and emotional support, but those are not tasks that dogs must be trained to perform so those animals are not considered to be service dogs; they are usually referred to as emotional support animals instead.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) gives disabled people that use service dogs the right to go almost anywhere the general public is allowed with their service dogs. This is a federal law enforced by the U.S. Department of Justice and it applies only to people with service dogs, not to those with emotional support animals.

Stores

You can take your psychiatric service dog into most stores, including grocery stores and other stores where food is sold. Your service dog must be on a leash, unless a leash prevents it from doing specific tasks you need it to do, and must be well-behaved and not bother other customers or store employees.

Restaurants

You can take your psychiatric service dog into the dining area of a restaurant. However, service dogs are not permitted in the kitchen or other food preparation areas. Your dog should remain on the floor and should not sit on chairs or tables in a restaurant. You should not feed your service dog in a restaurant and if you must give your dog water, you should bring a bowl with you for that purpose; don’t use dishes the restaurant serves food on for that purpose.

Other Businesses

You can take your psychiatric service dog into most other businesses, even when pets are not normally permitted. A service dog is not considered a pet. There are a few exceptions. If the presence of the dog would interfere with the business in a significant way, you may be unable to take your dog in. For instance, you will not be able to take your service dog into a room where computer chips are made, because a single dog hair could ruin the equipment. You may not be able to take your dog to certain exhibits at a zoo, if the animals in the exhibit are frightened of the dog or if the dog might pass on certain illnesses to the animals in the exhibit.

Hospitals and Other Health Care Facilities

You can take your psychiatric service dog to a hospital, doctor’s office or other health care facility, with a few exceptions. Service dogs are generally not permitted in areas that require special clothing or other precautions, such as operating rooms, burn care centers and some intensive care units. Since a dog cannot be gowned and masked, and cannot be sterilized, it would create an infection risk in an operating room.

If you are hospitalized, your service dog can probably remain with you but hospital staff is not required to care for your dog and if you are sick enough to need hospitalization, you probably won’t be able to care for your dog by yourself. You would need to arrange for someone to come to the hospital to take your dog out for walks, to feed your dog and provide other care as needed.

Traveling

You can take your psychiatric service dog with you on buses, trains and air planes. Your service dog can also ride with you in taxi cabs. Your service dog can stay with you in hotels, even if they typically do not allow pets, since your service dog is not a pet.

How Do You Get a Psychiatric Service Dog?

Psychiatric service dogs are dogs that are trained to assist people with psychiatric disabilities, like major depression, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and schizophrenia. Not all people with mental illnesses such as these are disabled by their conditions, of course. To qualify for a service dog, you must be disabled by your psychiatric illness.

Psychiatric service dogs are trained to perform specific tasks for disabled people; for instance, they might bring medication to someone suffering an anxiety attack or wake someone with post-traumatic stress disorder from a nightmare. Simply providing comfort is not considered a trained task and does not make a dog a service dog.

If you think you might benefit from a psychiatric service dog, discuss it with your treatment providers, such as your psychiatrist and therapist.

Psychiatric Service Dog Programs

Unless you have extensive experience training dogs, including working dogs, your best bet is to find a psychiatric service dog program and apply for a fully trained service dog. When you get a service dog from a reputable program, you get a dog that is well-trained and that has also been screened for potential health issues that might affect his ability to work. You should also receive training in how to work with your dog and have access to a trainer in the future for advice or assistance when needed.

Most service dog program charge a fee for trained service dogs, which can range from $1,000 to $10,000 or even more, but they often have scholarships that cover part of the cost for low-income applicants and they usually provide assistance with fundraising, so a service dog may be more affordable than you think. A program dog usually ends up being less expensive than training your own dog in the end.

Unfortunately, there is more demand for psychiatric service dogs than there are program-trained dogs available currently. You may have trouble finding a program in your area that trains dogs for the sort of tasks you need a service dog to do for you. Consider traveling to another area of the country if necessary to get a service dog. Most programs have one to two year waiting lists, but keep in mind the fact that it would take that long to train a service dog yourself, too, and if you train your own dog, there is no guarantee the dog will work out in the end.

Psychiatric service dog programs all have their own policies and procedures, but typically they will require you to complete an application, to provide documentation from your doctor verifying that you are in fact disabled and could benefit from a psychiatric service dog, to provide reference letters from people that know you verifying that you will provide a good home and care for a dog, and to attend a face-to-face interview. Most programs provide a period of training, sometimes done in a group format, in which recipients of their service dogs learn to work with their dogs.

Training Your Own Psychiatric Service Dog

If you have experience training dogs and you want to try to train your own service dog, you must start by finding an appropriate dog to train. An animal behaviorist or a professional dog trainer, one with experience training service dogs, can help you select an appropriate dog.

It takes about 18 months to train a service dog. Your dog will first need to be trained in basic obedience. Then he’ll need to learn to obey even in very distracting circumstances. In order to be allowed to take your service dog into public places with you, like grocery stores and restaurants, he’ll need to learn to heel closely, not to sniff people or objects, not to attempt to get to food or to eat food even if it’s dropped on the floor in front of him, and to ignore distractions like people calling him or attempting to pet him. Finally, he’ll need to be trained to perform specific tasks that mitigate your disability. For best results, work closely with a professional trainer during the training process.

Can Your Pet Become a Psychiatric Service Dog?

Your pet dog might be able to become a psychiatric service dog, but it’s unlikely. Most dogs simply do not have the temperament to be good service dogs. You can have your dog evaluated by an experienced professional trainer to see if he might have the right temperament. If he does, he’ll need about 18 months of training in order to become a service dog.

Sources:

Service Dog Central.Psychiatric Service Dogs (PSDs).

U.S. Department of Justice. Service Animals.

Info on Psychiatric Service Dogs

Just wanted to post links to a couple articles about psychiatric service dogs.

Do You Qualify for a Psychiatric Service Dog?

How Do You Get a Psychiatric Service Dog?

Service Dogs Helping with Anxiety

I got an email from someone asking about how service dogs might help with anxiety and how they would know when their handlers were getting ready to have an anxiety attack.  I thought those were great questions and wanted to share my answers here.

Dogs tend to be really in tune with their owners and with a service dog, the owner cultivates that.  For instance, the owner needs to be the one that feeds the dog, most of the time.  The dog learns that the owner is the person from whom all good things come, pretty much.  

Dogs are pack animals and it's natural for them to form really close bonds with others.  Basically, the owner is the head of the pack.  For most animals, a lot of communication is nonverbal.  Dogs communicate with each other by the position of their head, the position of their ears, how wide or narrow they open their eyes, stuff like that.  So it's natural for a dog to pay close attention to the owner's body language.  You don't really have to even teach them to do that.

The dog would need to be taught what I wanted it to do when he noticed certain body language.  Like, when I start getting anxious, my body gets tense.  My muscles get stiff.  My hands make tight fists.  It took me a while to even notice these things because they are small things and I don't think much about them.  If I'm close to crying, my lips start quivering.  Those are all things a dog would notice easily.  My breathing probably changes, too, when I’m getting anxious.  That’s something I need to pay more attention to.  

Dogs also have very, very sensitive noses.  People often sweat a little when they are anxious, and their sweat may even have a different odor, which would be easily detected by a dog.

And dogs are pack animals so they want to be around the members of their pack.  The dog would be happiest hanging out around his owner.  He’d notice all those signs of an impending anxiety attack, maybe even before I would notice them.  And it wouldn’t be hard for him to notice them, either.

Certain breeds, especially, like to have jobs to do.  They like to play, too, like all dogs so you wouldn't have a service dog "on duty" all the time.  But they like having jobs.  So you'd teach the dog that when it starts seeing those signs of increasing anxiety, you want it to go pick up this bottle of medication and bring it to you.  And the dog would get lots of treats and praise for doing that, so the dog would be happy to do it.  Plus, certain breeds, like retrievers, really like to retrieve things (hence the name).  

It's such a cool thing.  I'm still learning about how dogs are trained to do certain things, but they can be trained to do an incredible number of tasks.

Can You Certify Your Dog as a Psychiatric Service Dog?

This is another article I wrote which ended up not being published.

Can You Certify Your Dog as a Psychiatric Service Dog?

Psychiatric service dogs are dogs that have been specially trained to perform tasks that mitigate their handlers’ disabilities. People with a wide range of psychiatric conditions can benefit from service dogs, including people with depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and dissociative disorders. Many people with post-traumatic stress disorder, including veterans returning from war, are also aided by trained service dogs. I have post-traumatic stress disorder and am currently preparing for my own service dog, so I’ve been learning a lot about them.

Many people with psychiatric conditions like depression and anxiety find they feel better in the company of their dogs and they wonder how to get their dogs certified as psychiatric service dogs so that they can take their dogs into public places where pets are usually not allowed. Sometimes a person’s pet can become a psychiatric service dog, but not always. There are several factors to consider.

Are You Disabled?

As explained by Service Dog Central, in order to have a psychiatric service dog (or any other kind of service dog), you must be considered disabled under the guidelines established by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This means you must have a psychiatric disability that substantially limits your ability to function with regard to major life activities (things like seeing, hearing, thinking, walking, talking and communicating). Simply being diagnosed with a psychiatric condition like depression, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder or schizophrenia does not mean you’ll meet the definition of disabled under the ADA. Receiving Social Security Disability Insurance or other disability benefits does not mean you’ll meet the definition of disabled under the ADA, either.

I am disabled under the American’s with Disabilities Act guidelines, since post-traumatic stress disorder interferes at times with my ability to think clearly, makes it difficult to concentrate and at times even makes it hard for me to communicate with others. My condition is severe enough that I am unable to work at a regular job and I have had to be hospitalized numerous times. Talk with your psychiatrist or another mental health care professional if you’re not sure whether or not you disabled according to the definition provided by the ADA.

Is Your Dog Trained to Perform Tasks that Mitigate Your Disability?

Service Dog Central explains that in order for your dog to be considered a service dog, he must be trained to perform tasks that mitigate your disability. The specific tasks that mitigate a person’s disability will vary from person to person, of course. Tasks have to be things your dog was trained to do, though, not things dogs do naturally. For instance, many people with anxiety disorders calm down when their dog cuddles them. However, dogs are naturally cuddly; they don’t have to be trained to do this. Therefore it isn’t considered a trained task.

The tasks must be things you cannot do for yourself due to your disability. For instance, you might train a dog to fetch items like a telephone and a drink for you, but this is only considered a task that mitigates your disability if you are unable to get these things yourself. If you are able to fetch these items yourself, then you do not need a service dog to do them for you and having a dog that is trained to do it does not mean your dog would be considered a service dog.

Some of the things my service dog will be trained to do include bringing me medication when I have an anxiety attack, because at those times I cannot think clearly enough to remember to get the medication myself; leading me out of a store or other noisy, crowded place when I have an anxiety attack, because I cannot think clearly enough at those times to get myself to a safe place to try to calm down; and leading me home if I am out and about in my neighborhood and get disoriented, which sometimes happens if I have a flashback.

Certification

There is no national certification program for service dogs and the Americans with Disabilities Act does not require that service dogs be certified in order to accompany their handlers into public places. There are some companies that sell certification kits for service dogs but these are not necessary and do not ensure that a dog is a real service dog. Your dog is a psychiatric service dog if you are disabled by a psychiatric condition and if your dog has been trained to perform tasks that mitigate your disability. That’s all that is required.

However, dogs must have very good behavior in order to accompany their handlers’ into public places where pets are not typically permitted. It usually takes 18 to 24 months to train a service dog for public access. Not all dogs are suitable to be service dogs and your pet dog may not have what it takes. If you want to find out if your pet dog can be trained to be a psychiatric service dog, contact a professional trainer to arrange for an assessment of your dog.

Sources:

Service Dog Central. http://www.servicedogcentral.org/content/node/77. What Tasks Do Psychiatric Service Dogs Perform?

U.S Department of Justice. http://www.ada.gov/service_animals_2010.htm. Service Animals.

Service Dog Central. http://www.servicedogcentral.org/content/faq. Frequently Asked Questions.

If You Want to Learn More

I’ve written a number of articles about service dogs, but I can’t post them on my blog because they were published exclusively by the publisher that bought them from me.  However, I can post links to them, so if you’re interesting in learning more, you can check them out.  

What Kinds of Animals Can Be Service Animals?  

This article talks about what kind of service animals are covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act and discusses a variety of service animals, including service monkeys and miniature horses.

Would You Benefit from a Psychiatric Service Dog?  

This article discusses who might benefit from a psychiatric service dog.

Where Can You Take Your Psychiatric Service Dog?  

This article explains where you can and cannot take a psychiatric service dog.

Where Can You Take Your Emotional Support Animal?  

This article explains where you can and cannot take an emotional support animal.   An emotional support animal, or ESA, is not the same thing as a service animal.  It’s basically a pet for someone with a mental disability that is recommended as part of their treatment plan by their health care provider.

“Fake” Service Dogs Cause Problems for People with Real Service Dogs 

Apparently there is a significant problem involving people pretending their pets are service dogs when they really aren’t, just so they can take them into public places where pets aren’t allowed.  This is illegal and can be punished with fines and even jail time.  It also creates problems for people that have real service dogs.