Service animals

Service animals

Service animals fall under the category of American people with Disabilities Act. The animal is primarily a dog that has undergone training to carry out tasks or does work to benefit an individual with a sensory, intellectual, physical, or psychiatric disability. There is no specific training for emotional support animals, and ADA does not recognize them. Recently, there has been a skyrocketing request for service animals among college campus students. However, service animals have been assisting people for many years. With the growing body of support mental and health benefits of pet ownership, college students have benefited positively. The benefits include body benefits such as fewer physician visits, fewer medications, lower blood pressure, social capital, improved safety, and increased activities.

Service animals play the role of reducing stress levels in college campus students. Often, pursuing a degree in higher education is usually anxiety and stress-provoking process. The increase in added stressors has increased the number of requests for service animals among the higher education students. From the view of things, it is evident that these animals have positive benefits on the students (Hoffman, 2015). For instance, the levels of anxiety and stress diagnoses conveyed among students seeking approval to get accommodation for their service animals.

Moreover, various studies in colleges have also focused on the utilization of assistance animals because of their usefulness in stress, anxiety, and depression reduction. For example, research by Folse, Minder, Aycock, and Santana (1994), on assessing the possible impacts of therapy animals on college students gave significantly improved results.

Service animals provide therapeutic assistance to individuals under psychiatric medication. Such incidents have become prevalent, especially the cases of mental illness for college students. Today, many students join colleges while already under psychiatric medication or maybe expecting services on mental health once they arrive on campus (Watkins, Hunt, & Eisenberg, 2012). Additionally, administrators have reported cases of severe long-term and more challenging mental health issues. According to Twenge et al. (2010), five times as many students exceeded clinical limits in various mental health categories compared to the measurements taken in the previous years.

Service animals have helped mentally ill college students extensively with the increasing number of such students. The quantity has increased because it has become more acceptable to disclose a mental illness, hence the increased need for help. With the availability of service animals, students suffering from the obsessive-compulsive disorder, mood disorder, as well as those with a learning disability are now able to be accommodated in campuses and colleges something they could not do a few years ago (Kruisselbrink-Flatt, 2013).

Students with a certain level of disability tend to suffer most in campus settings in cases where they do not have service animals with them. The struggle is still ongoing, and a vast number of college students encounter challenges while trying to comply and understand with rules and regulations in the campus environment (Vejar, 2010). However, such incidents can be lessened through the use of the service animals which, as mentioned earlier, would support an individual emotionally by acting as a companion.

Service animals, for example, guide dogs aid individuals with blindness or visual impairments in locating places in campuses. Therefore, it deems right for such animals to be allowed to access all campus locations. Such should be permitted since a service animal is any trained dog that performs tasks or work that benefits a person with a disability, either sensory, physical, intellectual, psychiatric, or mental disability.

Moreover, the individuals with Disability Act (IDEA) of 1997 (IDEA, 2006) comes up with preferable practices in aiding special education students suffering from behavioural and emotional disorders. Therapy and service dogs are widely considered a feasible component of a special education classroom. Additionally, the mainstream population is, therefore, in a position to register personal animals for therapeutic reasons (Huss, 2011). From the evidence, service animals have positive results such as reducing anxiety, stress, and increasing academic engagement levels in students.

Additional challenges result from working with students with behavioral and emotional needs. These challenges call for the need for implementing mental health interventions in the classroom. Psychological disorders which include anxiety, adolescent schizophrenia, autism, and various mental health challenges lead to behaviors such as physical aggression and avoiding school which deserve modifications in the classrooms. In other cases, students end up getting expelled from school and also being subjected to other adverse punishments. The amendments should be designed to elevate student’s emotional and learning stability as well as reducing maladaptive behaviors (Vejar, 2010).

The use of service dogs serves as one of the promising intervention able to provide theoretical and anecdotal support for such students in classrooms programs serving the needs of the children. Peer-reviewed studies have proved that service dogs impact emotionally and behaviorally disordered students by placing service dogs in a classroom. The service dogs positively affect the wellbeing of the student’s academic engagement and generally their academic success (Anderson & Olson, 2006). Additional evidence supports that service animals provide positive results such as reducing levels of anxiety and elevating academic performance in both classrooms and academic engagement (Von, 2015).

REFERENCES

IDEA. (2006). Rules and regulations, 300.7 a 9 C.F.R.

Huss, R. J. (2011). Canines in the classroom: Service animals in primary and secondary educational institutions. Valpo Scholar.

Von Bergen, C. W. (2015). Emotional support animals, service animals, and pets on campus. Administrative Issues Journal: Education, Practice, and Research, 5(1).

Vejar, C. (2005). Review of a guide to self-help workbooks for mental health clinicians and researchers. The Family Journal, 13(4), 508-510.

Anderson, K. L., & Olson, M. R. (2006). The value of a dog in a classroom of children with severe emotional disorders. Anthrozoos: A Multidisciplinary Journal of The Interactions of People & Animals, 19(1), 35-49.

Kruisselbrink-Flatt, A. (2013). A suffering generation: Six factors contributing to the mental health crisis in North American higher education. College Quarterly, 17(1), 1-17

Twenge, J. M., Gentile, B., DeWall, C. N., Ma, D., Lacefield, K., & Schurtz, D. R. (2010). Birth cohort increases in psychopathology among young Americans, 1938–2007: A cross-temporal meta-analysis of the MMPI. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(2), 145-154.

Watkins, D. C., Hunt, J., & Eisenberg, D. (2012). Increased demand for mental health services on college campuses: Perspectives from administrators. Qualitative Social Work, 11(3), 319-337.

Folse, E. B., Minder, C. C., Aycock, M. J., & Santana, R. T. (1994). Animal-assisted therapy and depression in adult college students [Electronic version]. Anthrozoös, 7, 188-194.

Hoffman, J. (2015, October 4). Campuses debate rising demands for “comfort animals.” New York Times. International Association of Human-Animal Interaction Organizations (2014).