Mental health help dogs: support for 'Psych Dogs'

Following on from my previous post on the effect that pet ownership can have on mental health, I decided to look more specifically at assistance dogs for people that suffer from mental health issues.
Dogs can help people cope and manage with their mental illness, such as people with severe depression, agoraphobia, social anxiety among other conditions. Mental health campaigner Marion Janner spoke to The Guardian newspaper about her experience with her assistance dog, Buddy. She suffers with severe depression and says that Buddy plays a massive part in helping her learn to cope with her issues. She reports that Buddy helps her want to keep going, gives her something to focus on, gives her a sense of purpose and responsibility.

Marion with Buddy (The Guardian)

Marion's case is just one example of how dogs can play a role in helping people with mental health problems. As I've previously mentioned, interaction with pets and animals can have a health advantage, such as lower blood pressure and stress levels. In terms of mental health, dogs provide non judgmental social contact to help overcome loneliness, they also promote regular exercise and getting out in the fresh air as well as providing unconditional love to their owner which can be very healing.

Currently, in the UK, mental health assistance dogs do not have any official rights or recognition as service dogs.  There are campaigns surrounding this issue saying that 'psych dogs' should have the same rights as other service  dogs such as guide dogs for the blind and hearing dogs for the deaf. Having these rights would mean that the dogs can accompany their owners to work, into shops and restaurants etc.

In the USA mental health assistance dogs are fully recognised as service dogs. They are trained to help their owner with a number of day to day tasks such as, reminding them to take medication, waking them up in the morning and helping them cope in a crowded place by creating a physical boundary, among other things.

These help dogs can provide an extremely valuable service to their owners, they can help them to become part of the world again, regain control of their lives and get them out of the darkness and isolation their mental illness can bring. To me, it makes a lot of sense that these dogs get the rights and recognition of any other service dog.

A recent development in this area is the introduction of the UK's first 'dementia dogs'. Two dogs have been specially trained for 18 months to help people that have been diagnosed with early stage Dementia. The dogs have been taught to respond to alarms and bring medicine pouches as well as encourage their owners to get out of bed in the morning. The dogs provide their owners with a new sense of confidence that has been lost since their diagnosis. They also keep their owners company to prevent them becoming frightened when alone. These dogs have been placed with two families, they've been working with their owners for four months and are doing well.

A dementia dog at work (bbc news)

Twitter: @psych_discuss

Can pets help mental health?

I, like many others, am an animal lover and I am interested in the thought that owning a pet could help people improve their mental health or help them cope with mental illness.

There seems to be a lack of reliable and well funded evidence into whether pets and animals generally can improve both mental and physical health. There is research that suggests that older people who are pet owners are more active and less likely to be depressed than their peers that don't own a pet. Furthermore, research suggests that pet owners tend to be less stressed and also have lower blood pressure.

When it comes to the practice of animal assisted therapy, it is difficult to know how effective it is in improving health; a lot of the research is poor and fails to consider the long term effects. In terms of pet ownership, there is a huge amount of anecdotal evidence that supports the idea that having a pet improves mental health and particularly helps people cope with their mental illness.

I genuinely believe that owning a pet can have a real positive impact on a person's mental health. A pet provides companionship, a friend that is often desperately needed by people that are troubled with mental health issues. In addition, there is a known correlation between regular exercise and improved mental health, it can help reduce symptoms of depression. Walking a dog every day provides that regular exercise and fresh air that can really help people that are suffering.

Anxiety sufferer Sally agrees that pets can help with mental health issues:
"When I feel the anxiety rising , stroking my cat and listening to her purr relaxes me and calms me down. Although they can never replace human contact, they don't judge like people do." 

Whether it's a cat, a dog or anything else a pet can provide a sense of purpose  to sufferers, a reason to get out of bed in the morning, something to focus on.

"I strongly believe that without my dog and cat I would not still be here today, they love me unconditionally and that gives me a great deal of comfort." Says Diane.

So it seems that owning a pet really could be good for your health!

Twitter: @psych_discuss

The truth about Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is the most misunderstood mental disorder, it seems to conjure fear and prejudice and sufferers have to deal with a great amount of prejudice. The condition is often criminalised, mostly because of media portrayal and a general lack of understanding about what Schizophrenia is and how it effects it's sufferers. Educating people about the condition is vital to tackling the stigma associated with it.

Schizophrenia is a long term mental health condition that can cause a range of different psychological symptoms. These include:
Hallucinations: This is when people see or hear things that don't exist. The most common hallucinations are auditory (hearing voices) these voices are usually critical of the sufferer.
Delusions: These are unusual beliefs or ideas that are not based on reality and would seem impossible to anybody else as they often contradict the evidence. These can include delusions of grandeur, such as believing they are famous and delusions of persecution which is the belief that people are 'out to get them.'

Doctors often classify Schizophrenia as a psychotic illness, this means that a person cannot distinguish their own thoughts and ideas from reality.
The onset of Schizophrenia is usually earlier in men, being most common in the late teens and early twenty's. It tends to occur later in women, being most frequent in the late twenty's and early thirty's.

There are a number of misconceptions surrounding Schizophrenia and it seems that there is a general lack of understanding creating a sense of fear. These are a few of the misconceptions:

People with Schizophrenia are violent.
Sufferers of Schizophrenia are no more violent than anyone else. The only reason they may be is if they forget to take their medication, they are under the influence of drugs and use them regularly or, they have a history of violence and are generally violent people. This misconception has often been portrayed by the media, but the fact is, people with Schizophrenia tend to be anxious, passive and fearful of people and the outside world.

Schizophrenia means that people have multiple personalities.
This is not true. This is a separate disorder that is not the same as Schizophrenia. Split personality is known as Dissociative Disorder. The word 'Schizophrenia' derives from the Greek word meaning  'split mind' with reference to the split in personality that Schizophrenics often experience.

You can't recover from Schizophrenia.
Not necessarily. Although Schizophrenia is what is known as a chronic mental health condition, with the right treatment people are often able to improve and recover over time.

This is an interesting video showing what it's like for a sufferer of Schizophrenia, it highlights the voices that they hear and what they say. Imagine hearing such things all the time, it easy to see how people would struggle to cope.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYHVbLLO2bU