How can I help treat my dog's depression or anxiety?
Studies show that dogs reduce stress, anxiety and depression, ease loneliness, encourage exercise and improve your all-around health.
Tasks and benefits service dogs provide A psychiatric service dog can be trained to perform a wide range of tasks to help someone with depression. These include tasks related to assisting during a crisis, helping you cope with emotional overload, and providing treatment-related assistance.
Dogs help with anxiety and other mental illness, similarly to how they help with depression. They increase oxytocin production, which decreases stress and fear, and provides unconditional companionship to their owners. These things help with mental illnesses of all kinds, including anxiety and depression.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), playing with dogs can raise oxytocin levels, which decreases blood pressure and heart rate and lowers stress, anger and depression.
Studies have shown that pet owners are less likely to suffer from depression than people without pets. People with limited human social supports often experience feelings of loneliness and isolation, both of which can worsen depression. A pet helps to decrease these feelings by providing companionship to its owner.
Most dogs bounce back from depression within a few days to a few months with just a little extra TLC, said Ciribassi. “Keep them engaged, do more of the things they like to do, get them a little more exercise, and they should be fine,” he said.
You (the owner): Are you feeling depressed or are you gone a lot? Some dogs become depressed if their owner's are gone a lot. This may be similar to separation anxiety (but instead of "acting out" your dog gets depressed).
The most commonly prescribed pet med for dog depression is Fluoxetine, the generic form of Prozac, which helps with both depression and anxiety.
Dog depression symptoms are very similar to those in people, said John Ciribassi, DVM, past president of the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior. “Dogs will become withdrawn. They become inactive. Their eating and sleeping habits often change.
How do you know if your dog is depressed?
How do you know if your dog is depressed?