Our Psychiatric Assistance Dog Program

Last updated:

22 February 2024

Find out about our Program and how to apply for a psychiatric assistance dog.

Our Program

If you have a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the Psychiatric Assistance Dog Program aims to help you meet your clinical recovery goals. This includes detecting signs of distress and performing tasks to help alleviate the symptoms. It could be such things as:

waking you if you are having a night terror
nuzzling you to distract you from emotionally disabling symptoms
moving you out of stressful situations.

There are currently 4 contracted psychiatric assistance dog training providers enabling us to support veterans nationally.

These providers typically only train Labradors and Golden Retrievers as they are the most suitable for training as assistance dogs because of their intelligence and temperament.

Who is eligible

To be eligible for a psychiatric assistance dog, you must:

have a Veteran Gold or White Card
have a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from a psychiatrist
have been undergoing treatment with a psychiatrist or psychologist for your PTSD for at least 3 months
be assessed as having the emotional resilience needed to be involved in the training and care of a psychiatric assistance dog.

How you apply

If you feel you may be eligible, you should talk with your mental health professional. Mental health professionals who can prescribe a psychiatric assistance dog include:

psychiatrists
psychologists
mental health social workers
mental health occupational therapists.

We encourage you to speak to your mental health professional about any concerns you have. These may be stressors in your life now, or that you expect in the next 2 years, which may impact your ability to complete the intensive training to become an assistance dog handler.

What information we need

If your mental health professional believes you are suitable, they will need to complete the assistance dog application form.

They will ask you to complete a 12-question disability assessment schedule with your application. This is known as a World Health Organisation Disability Assessment Schedule (WHODAS). This will help us understand your level of health and disability. Once you have received your assistance dog, we will ask you to complete this questionnaire at various points during your first 2 years in the Program. This information will only be used to evaluate the Program and cannot be linked back to you.

Completing the application form

When your mental health professional is completing the form and providing supporting information, they may ask you questions about your:

living arrangements and whether you can accommodate a dog living with you
ability to care for and regularly exercise an assistance dog
support networks that you have on hand to help with the care of the dog when you are less able or unable to do this
emotional resilience and your ability to do intensive training
family dynamics and whether there is a history of domestic violence or history of animal abuse (this includes all members of the household)
psychiatric admissions to hospitals or clinics in the last 12 months
misuse of drugs or alcohol in the last 12 months.

What happens when we approve your application

If you are approved into the Program, the dog provider will start the matching process. It takes time to breed and train a psychiatric assistance dog, so there may not be an appropriate dog immediately available. If there isn’t, the dog provider will keep you up to date about how things are going.

As each psychiatric assistance dog is specifically trained in a range of tasks to meet your clinical recovery goals, you will also need to be trained as the dog’s handler. This training can take 18 months to 2 years for you and your assistance dog to complete.

Neither DVA nor the dog provider can put in any requests for priority access to a psychiatric assistance dog.

What happens when we do not approve your application

If your request is not approved, you should make an appointment with your mental health professional as soon as possible. We provide them with the reasons for the decline because they are the ones requesting the assistance dog for you. They will talk to you about these reasons and discuss other treatment options which may be more suitable.

If your circumstances change, your mental health professional can submit another request on your behalf in the future.

What your responsibilities are

You will be asked to sign an agreement with our dog provider. Once you have signed this plan, you are required to:

keep to the assistance dog provider’s program requirements
participate in all required training sessions
follow the dog provider’s daily exercise and feeding regime for the assistance dog
make sure your assistance dog has annual veterinary checks to keep its vaccinations up to date
continue with ongoing treatment with your psychologist or psychiatrist.

While the psychiatric assistance dog is in your care, you will be supported by the dog provider. They will do checks every 6 months to make sure you and your assistance dog are working well together. You will also need to do an annual Public Access Test (PAT) and any other training that is needed.

We encourage you to ask for help from your assistance dog provider if you experience any difficulty or if you have any incidents with your assistance dog.

Funding for privately sourced assistance dogs

The Australian Government introduced funding for eligible veterans who sourced an accredited psychiatric assistance dog before the Program started.

To be eligible for this funding, you need to meet the following criteria:

You must apply for and be found eligible for the Psychiatric Assistance Dog Program.
You must have completed training, or been in training, with your psychiatric assistance dog prior to the start of the Program in September 2019.
You must maintain ongoing PAT certification.
You must maintain accreditation for you and your assistance dog, under the requirements of the state or territory government where you reside.

You can apply for the Program now and if your application is approved, we can reimburse you for the costs of maintaining your dog's welfare. We will cover reasonable costs, up to a quarterly limit, from 1 July 2022 onwards. You cannot claim any costs you had before this date.

More information on assistance dogs

Read more about our arrangements for assistance dogs, including reimbursement of upkeep expenses.