How do dogs react to people with mental illness

Question

how does a dog react to mental illness how do they feel and respond to a person and how do they react so please no discrimination or insults against mental illness it really would make me upset thank u

Answer 1

If there is something really specific you want to know then please add it. At present the question is very very broad.

I am assuming that you are talking about when people are accutely unwell. Any dog that is well socialised should be comfortable around all sorts of people. But, if dogs are not well socialised to a wide range of people as young pups, and/or they have negative experiences with people at such ages then they may not react well. Some dogs are fearful of people with hats on, just because they have never seen it before. As pups they need to be exposed to people yelling, walking funny, wearing different clothes, etc. But, it needs to be done in a positive and supportive way. They also need to be handled by lots of different people, but these people all need to be really positive experiences so they begin to think that all people are great.

While a dog cannot simply pick up individual symptoms, etc they can and often do know that all is not well. How they respond to that will depend on the dogs ability to handle stress, how well it has been socialised, whether it feels comfortable at the tiime, etc.

Therapy dogs visit Psychiatric hospitals all the time without any ill effects on the dogs, but these dogs are carefully temperament tested and the handlers are usually also trained and supported in working with the dog in such envrionments. I certainly wouldn't be placing a dog to live in such an environment as they sometimes do in nursing homes, as I feel that it would be way too much stress on the dog to have to be around 24/7, but for few hours here and there it is fine.

Dogs can also be trained as Psychiatric Service Dogs. These dogs have to have brillant tempeaments, better than the best guide dogs, as they need to be able to cope not just in the highly stressful envrionment of public access but also at times when the person may not be able to make full decisions. These dogs perform specific tasks which mitigate the persons disability, such as leading a disoriented person to a certain place, and many guide dog type tasks. While it is true that most of these dogs also provide immense emotional support for the handler they must by law be individually trained to perform tasks which assist with activities of daily living which the person is unable to do for themselves. While many people claim that the dogs alert ot panic attacks this is very very doubtful. By their very nature panic attacks are very sudden things, and so if you cannot know that you are about to react to something as the thing has not appeared yet the dog cannot either. It is however true that dogs can and do learn to read the persons body language when they are entering into a panic attack, after it has started but before the person is fully aware of it. Dogs can be trained to recognise these changes in the persons behaviour through the help of therapists and other people very close to the person who are aware of them, and to then alert the person to them, so they can perform activities taught to them in therapy like deep breathing, visualisations, etc to help to calm themselves down. By interving earlier with the help of the dog people can often reduce the length and severity of the attacks.

Answer 2

i think it's impossible for a dog to tell if a person has a mental illness.  they are very smart creatures, but do not have the brain capacity to understand such intricate human things.  dogs can sense basic feelings like joy and sadness, terror and loneliness.  they can't look at someone and think to themselves, "this person is mentally ill."  

a dog loves being loved no matter by who or what.  as long as it's treated kindly, it will reciprocate the same emotions.

Answer 3

the same as a dog is to the blind, if they are brought into it they know no different, , I had a Labrador and he was amazing with my kids and the down syndrome kid at kindergarten, a very reliable unconditional friend for people who are intellectually impaired at any degree.

I strongly recommend dogs for therapeutic unconditional love.