Psychiatric Service Dogs Break New Ground

Veronica Morris wrote:
Hi there,

I thought you might like to hear that founder of the Psychiatric Service Dog Society recently won a Welcome Back award for her advancements in the mental health field!

An excerpt from the article:

“Dr. Joan Esnayra, a successful scientist, was newly diagnosed with a mental illness when she decided to get a puppy in order to lift her mood. To her surprise, the puppy demonstrated an uncanny ability to signal Dr. Esnayra in advance of major mood shifts, allowing her to work with her doctor to adjust her medication dosage, accordingly. Dr. Esnayra connected with others who reported similar experiences with their dogs and she started an Internet support group. She coined the term ‘Psychiatric Service Dog’ (PSD) and developed a therapeutic model around training dogs to do tasks such as waking up their owner in the morning, encouraging exercise and even reminding their owner to take his or her medication. She founded the Psychiatric
Service Dog Society and has helped thousands of mentally ill individuals learn how to train and use their own PSD. She is conducting research on the efficacy of these canine partnerships and will publish her results in clinical journals.”

You can visit the Psychiatric Service Dog Society that she founded at the PsychDog site.

I think it’s great that psychiatric service dogs are getting recognition like this! There are quite a few psychiatric service dogs on dogster (Sabrina included)!

Veronica and Sabrina

To read the rest of the press release from the Lilly Corporation follow this link.

Thanks for barking in Veronica and Sabrina! Congratulations to Dr. Joan!