Mental illness is incredibly commonplace here in the United States, there’s really just no doubt about it. From PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) to anxiety disorders and clinical depression, mental illnesses are diagnosed quite frequently among people of all ages, all genders, and all backgrounds. Of course, everyone’s mental illness will look different, but there is no doubt that many people struggle to cope with them on a regular basis, with the severity of their mental illness sometimes impeding in their overall ability to live their lives as they might wish to.
For instance, the 3.5% of the population that is impacted by PTSD (up to nearly 8 million people in total) often find that navigating day to day life while avoiding any and all PTSD triggers can be difficult. Many people with PTSD find that they isolate themselves to avoid these triggers but of course often suffer as a result of this isolation as well. The same can be said for almost any type of anxiety disorders, which are diagnosed more commonly than any other mental illness and impact as many as 40 million adults and countless more children and adolescents in the United States alone.
Of course, clinical depression or other types of depression like Post Partum Depression (which is also more commonly known as PPD) can lead to an impact on your life as well. Depression can make it difficult to leave the house, or even just to complete the basic everyday tasks associated with living a healthy and productive life. Many people find that having depression – especially untreated and undiagnosed depression – keeps them from living their lives as fully as they might hope.
Fortunately, there are a number of ways in which mental illnesses, from anxiety to depression, can be treated. Medication is one option, one that can effectively work to balance the brain chemistry of those who suffer from various mental illnesses. For some conditions, such as Post Partum depression, medication has been found to be hugely successful in helping to balance the chemicals that have gone a little bit out of whack, getting them back to levels that are much healthier and much more conducive to a good balance of mental health.
In addition to working with a psychiatrist (the doctor who is able to prescribe these medications), many mental health sufferers will choose to engage in talk therapy as well. Talk therapy like cognitive behavioral therapy among many other types can really be the major changing force in a person’s life, changing the essential way in which they deal with and relate to their mental illness. But for some people, developing healthy coping mechanisms when in the outside world is nothing if not a tremendously difficult thing to be able to do.
For many people suffering from mental illness, having an emotional support animal can be hugely helpful, if the emotional support animal in question has undergone the type of training that is necessary. The type of training for an emotional support animal is different from the type of training that is given to your standard service dog, but the type of training that an emotional support animal receives allows the animal to provide legitimate emotional support to their owner in hectic and anxiety producing situations and even just within the home.
From social anxiety disorder to PTSD, and emotional support animal with the right type of training can actually make a huge difference in the lives of many mental illness sufferers. In fact, the data that has been gathered on the subject more than backs up this claim, showing that keeping an animal such as an emotional support animal that has had the proper type of training will raise the overall mental health of up to very nearly three quarters of all people who have pets of varying natures. From a therapy cat for depression to other types of pet therapy for depression, having an animal around can make the difference of night and day in the mental state that many people face on a daily basis.
