Dogs help people with depression, bipolar disorder and agoraphobia

Dog Helps Woman Cope With Panic

MAY 09, 12:01 EDT

By MARY PEMBERTON
Associated Press Writer

CATONSVILLE, Md. (AP) — The smell of a cigarette. The sound of footsteps behind her. Little things like these can trigger Lisa Conti's panic attacks and return her to the night she was raped.

She remembers the day in 1987 when, as an Army private in South Korea, she was jumped from behind, dragged into a car and driven to a place where she was raped by four men and tortured with lit cigarettes. She begins sweating and can't breathe.

``I could be sitting at home, all by myself, and I could have one,'' Ms. Conti said, sitting on her living room couch, her arm tucked around her dog, King, her fingers stroking his black fur.

Ms. Conti rescued King from an animal shelter in May 1994 on the day he was to be euthanized. Little did she know he would end up saving her.

``King is my lifeline to the world,'' Ms. Conti said.

King, a 6-year-old spaniel mix, is a registered service dog. He senses when Ms. Conti is going to have a panic attack and sometimes can help prevent them.

Guide dogs for the blind have been around for 80 years, but using dogs for ``invisible disabilities'' is relatively new. Dogs now are being trained to help people with such problems as depression, bipolar disorder and agoraphobia, said Susan Duncan, manager of the service dog center at Delta Society, a nonprofit group in Renton, Wash., that promotes the health benefits of animals.

No one knows for sure how King senses when Ms. Conti is about to have a panic attack. He may be responding to changes in scent caused by changes in body chemistry, Ms. Duncan said.

Training will reinforce what the dogs will want to do naturally when their owners are distressed: lean against their owners, nuzzle them and stand between them and a crowd.

``When I would have a panic attack, he would come up and put his body against me,'' Ms. Conti said. ``It helped keep me out of what was happening inside.''

Rick Stephens, of Norman, Okla., isn't sure how Chief, his German shepherd mix, knows when he's about to have a panic attack.

Stephens' doctor prescribed a service dog to help with post-traumatic stress from serving in Vietnam. Chief proved invaluable one winter day while Stephens was driving over an icy pass between Laramie and Cheyenne, Wyo.

``All of a sudden Chief, who was in back of the station wagon, began whining and nuzzling my neck,'' Stephens said. ``Then something popped into my head. `This dog knows something I don't.' No sooner had I pulled to the side of the road and gotten that car in park, I had a full-blown panic attack.''

Stephens relies on Chief to alert him to take his anti-anxiety drug before he has an attack.

``If I don't have meds, he gets me through it by just sitting there nuzzling,'' he said.

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, people with physical and mental impairments that ``substantially limit one or more major life activities'' can have a trained service dog with them.

Despite the law, Ms. Conti says she has a hard time getting people to understand that King is entitled to go where she goes.

Shari Sternberger, founder of National Capital Therapy Dogs in Highland, Md., says taking away a mentally disabled person's service dog is equivalent to removing glasses from a near-sighted person or a cane from someone with a limp.

``The dog is considered ... a medical appliance, nothing more or nothing less. That appliance allows her to function in life,'' she said.

Ms. Conti has been turned away from restaurants, shops, even the Baltimore Orioles ballpark. Recently, she got a photo identification card for King from the Department of Veterans Affairs that she hopes will help people understand her disability.

By the time Ms. Conti was discharged from the Army on April 21, 1989, her psychological problems were overwhelming. Over the next six years, she was hospitalized more than 100 times. She was too fearful to walk to the end of her driveway.

Dr. John Butchart, a staff psychologist at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Baltimore, thought a companion dog would be good for her. He had no idea the dog would be critical to her feeling of well-being.

``Before she got this animal she was extremely timid, very retiring, almost agoraphobic,'' he said. ``Now she is different. ... She has become much more assertive, far more confident.''

If Ms. Conti is having a nightmare, King will come and lick her hand until she wakes up. If a panic attack occurs when she is attending class at the local community college, King will steer her toward a quiet corner and stay with her until her terror subsides.

``People don't understand that you are frozen. You can't move, you're shaking and you're sweating, but there is nothing going on around you. He leads me away,'' she said.

Ms. Conti, who was last hospitalized in 1996, takes no psychiatric medication. She holds a job and is going to college to become a park ranger. Although she has two or three panic attacks a month, she says they are tolerable, thanks to King.

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