Emotional Support Animals Play Key Roles for Some Students

Many students of Spring Hill College depend on service and assistance animals all aroundcampus. To the students who do not own the animal itself, it may just be a friendly furry facearound campus that brightens their day and reminds them of their pet back home. However, thestudents who own these animals rely on them heavily and endured a detailed process to get themapproved to live on campus.

Anxiety and depression are widely talked about topics in college students. These feelings areoften met with the need for comfort and support, which often comes from animals.“Animal therapy is primarily offered in hospitals, rehabilitation centers and long-termcare facilities, but increasingly are popping up in airports, schools, colleges and otherplaces where individuals may experience high stress or anxiety,” psychologist CarolO’Saben told the website, Affordable Colleges Online, that there are many benefits toanimal-assisted therapy.

An Inside Higher Education article by Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, published in May of this year, states that there has been arapid incline in the number of college students in the nation requesting emotional supportanimals on college campuses. He goes on to explain that is its of many colleges’ concern that theanimals may not truly be needed for anything more than companionship.

 

This might explain why Spring Hill, along with many other colleges have such a detailed andlengthy application and approval process for animals to live on campus. The major distinction inthese types of animals is in the clarification of what type of assistance the animal providesThe Spring Hill College student handbook highlights the definitions of a service animal, anassistant animal and a pet and explains, in depth, what aspects qualify an animal to be approvedon campus. According to the school policy, service animal is approved for students with disabilities in which the animal mayconduct tasks that are directly related to the person’s disability. As stated in the studenthandbook, some of these tasks may include, “reminding a person with a mental illness to takeprescribed medications,” or, “calming a person with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)during an anxiety attack.”

An assistance animal is similar to a service animal in that it provides assistance to one with adisability. The difference is that an assistance animal does not provide help with day-to-dayactivities such as a service animal does, but rather it provides emotional support in a way thatmakes living easier by alleviating some of the symptoms of distress that one may beexperiencing.

Before bringing the animal onto campus, the student that is in need of the assistance or serviceanimal must fill out the application, complete an interview with superiors in the Office of Residence Lifeand obtain records from a doctor that indicates that the student does, in fact, require theassistance of their animal.

 

Once approved, the owner and animal enter into an agreement with Residence Life that this will be a mutually beneficial situation. Residence lLife agrees to help the

owner and animal in accommodating for certain residence halls that may be more beneficial tothe animal or person and their disability. With this, the student agrees to maintain their animaland keep it on a leash at all times as well as cleaning up after it and making sure that it does notinterfere with the day to day lives of other students on campus.