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An outfit called “The Psychiatric Service Dog Society” has information about a special kind of service dog for those living with mental illness and disabilities - Psychiatric Service Dog (PSD)

And of course they have a website: http://www.psychdog.org

As “psychdog” explains, the “gold standard” for differentiating a service dog from just another happy companion pooch is often assistive task training. And they give this example of how someone suffering from a disabling mental condition - in this case Major Depression - might create a plan for how a service dog could be trained to assist them:

1. Make a list of your five most debilitating symptoms. Mental illness is by its nature episodic, so don’t worry if your worst symptoms are not manifest on a daily basis. Here is an example for a person living with Major Depression.
Symptoms: -
Persistent sadness
Hopelessness
Hypersomnia (i.e., excessive sleeping)
Lack of motivation or apathy
No appetite

2. Generate a list of tasks that may be trained to mitigate your constellation of symptoms. You can do this by consulting the PSDS task list or by asking your online service dog friends for ideas. Don’t worry about how to train your dog to perform these tasks, yet. You will work this out with the trainer you ultimately select.

Symptoms - Trainable Tasks:
Persistent sadness - ‘Hug’ command
Hopelessness - ‘Cuddle’ and ‘Kiss’ commands
Hypersomnia (i.e., excessive sleeping) - Wake-up at specific time each day
Lack of motivation or apathy - ‘Settle’ for Tactile Stimulation sessions
Short-term memory loss - Remind to take medication at specific times

3. When deeply depressed, it is easy to forget the repertoire of tasks one has trained his/her PSD to perform. For this reason, consider taping a copy of your ’symptoms & tasks’ list to your refrigerator. This will provide a helpful reminder when you need it most.

4. Share the task list with your professional dog trainer. She will teach you how to train your dog to reliably execute each task on command. As you become more comfortable with dog training in general, you will likely think of additional tasks your service dog may be trained to perform. Herein lays the beauty of training one’s own PSD. Even after the handler-trainer relationship has ended, a handler is empowered to continue refining his/her dog’s ability to assist.