That’s why I’ve invited Licensed Professional Counselor Cathy Wilson back to join us today to talk about the struggle that many therapists have when it comes to returning those initial phone calls from potential clients . . . and what to do about it.

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A Guest Post by Catherine Wilson, LPC, ACS

If you have been in private practice long enough to call a few potential clients after they have left you voice mails, you have probably heard “You’re the only one who has ever called me back!”

In my first few years of practicing, this stunned me.

I couldn’t imagine how other counselors stayed in business. 

I couldn’t imagine how so many people who were in a helping profession would not call potential clients back.

After all . . . a big part of our job is connecting with people!

The Struggle 

At the same time, I noticed that I struggled almost every time I needed to call someone back who might be a new client.  

This made no sense to me and yet anxiety and distress around returning these particular phone calls have remained a challenge for me over the years.

It doesn’t happen when a potential client emails and it doesn’t happen when an existing client calls. 

So What’s The Big Deal?

These days I know exactly what goes on for me; but, I also know this remains a challenge for a lot of other counselors, too.

I know it because many clients still mention that therapists are not returning their phone calls.

I took my question to several of my colleagues and also to large group of therapists on Facebook as an informal poll.  

Some interesting information surfaced in the feedback I received.

The Excuses And The Reasons

Many therapists mentioned technology problems such as the person’s voice mailbox “being full” or receiving a “garbled message” resulting in them not being unable to understand the correct number to call back.  

However, it seems to me that technology problems aren’t frequent enough to be an adequate explanation for how prevalent this seems to be.   

This article is about the other reasons we struggle to return phone calls to potential clients – the ones within our control – and not just the “tech glitches.”

It’s my hope that by understanding our own impulses and those of our colleagues, we can all do better at returning phone calls in two ways.

For some of us, perhaps we can improve how we manage returning potential client calls; and, for others, perhaps we can strive to simply be less judgmental of our colleagues and better understand how difficult this is for them.

The Other Eplanations

The other explanations I have heard many therapists offer for not returning phone calls include some form of the following three things:

1. Therapists have limited time or energy,
2. Therapists’ anxieties or dislikes of phone conversations prevents them from returning calls, or
3. Their fears of possible judgment or rejection from potential clients gets in the way.

 So, let’s talk about each of these.

Time And Energy

Our schedules and the number of clients we see can vary a lot from day to day.

Finding the time and energy to make a phone call after giving so much to our existing clients can often feel like too much of a drain on what little energy is left. 

Some of the ways we might describe this could be:

• “I want to be present for the person and give the person the attention that is needed.”
• “I don’t want to sound superficial.”
• “I have no time between sessions.”
• “I won’t call outside the office – boundaries.”
• “I don’t know what is going on for them and if their need for my time will exceed what I can give them.”
• “I get frustrated with ‘phone tag.'”
• “I need privacy and the times and places I have that are limited.”
• “I have a limited amount of time for phone calls and for my own self-care.”
• “I’m afraid it will be difficult to get off the phone – especially when I begin to care.”
• “I have a hard time with time management.”
• “I don’t want to have to cut them off if I run out of time, when I can hear they are hurting.”

Anxiety Or Dislike

Truthfully, some of us just get anxious or plain dislike talking on the phone. 

One or more of these could be true for you:

• “I don’t like interacting when I can’t observe a person’s body language.”
• “I have hearing problems and I worry that it will be difficult for me or for the caller.”
• “I had a negative experience with the phone as a child that gives me a lot of anxiety any time I need to make a phone call.”
• “I worry that something will be misunderstood due to poor reception or the audio on a call getting garbled.”
• “It gets tedious with same information each time about insurance, location, fee/co-pay, etc..”
• “I worry that someone other than the client will answer. “

Fear Of Judgment Or Rejection

These are some of our more vulnerable reasons for not returning phone calls.  

More than one of these has come up for me:

• “I don’t like it when potential clients ask personal questions such as what religion I am, my age, or if I have children.”
• “What I say will be misunderstood and there won’t be a way to clarify it if I never hear from the client again.”
• “I feel rushed and worry about pauses, especially since they can’t see or tell that I’m thinking.”
• “I’m afraid that I won’t have a good response and they will reject me.”
• “I worry that I won’t be worthy or they won’t like me.”
• “I have an accent and am worried I will be judged or rejected.”
• “It sometimes feels like an interrogation and I get uncomfortable.”
• “I forgot to call them back within the usual time and then was too embarrassed to call.”
• “Imposter syndrome” gets to me, and I just can’t face feeling like I’m not good enough to meet this person’s needs.”
   And, Then There’s More

The reasons I’ve listed so far are reasons I consider to be relatively understandable to most of us in this profession. 

Not all of the reasons this happens are as understandable to many.

However, it is worthwhile to search ourselves for any reasons that come up, such as those that follow, even when it may be uncomfortable.    

An open and problem-solving dialogue with our peers can strengthen our profession as a whole, too.  

The Biases We Carry

Each of us is ethically mandated to be aware and self-reflective of the biases we carry.

Those biases influence the conclusions we draw about a client just based on how their voice sounds on the phone; and, those biases may be related to race, stigma associated with certain diagnoses, intelligence, socioeconomic status, religion, values, and more. 

Jessica Joiner, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Licensed Addiction Counselor, and owner of Journey Inspired Counseling in Parker, Colorado consults with colleagues on potential bias in psychotherapy. 

She says, “Recognizing your own power and privilege is extremely important to uncovering and identifying your biases (about anything).

If you struggle to admit that you have biases, then you most likely aren’t able to recognize your own power and privilege. 

We aren’t just talking about race either. 

This is about any area of society where you fit into the majority – this gives you power and privilege in that area.

Examining your privilege takes work, self-reflection and honesty with yourself—about yourself – and it is not easy because we don’t always like what we discover. 

Sometimes it may look contradictory to our conscious belief system.”

Bias can influence us in our clinical work and it can influence us as early as the initial phone call from a potential client.

When that happens, thoughts like these below sometimes come up:

• “I only work with high functioning people and this person doesn’t seem like they are.”
• “This person sounds like they are dealing with Borderline Personality Disorder and I just can’t take that on right now.”
• “I can tell already I won’t like this person.”
• “This person clearly wants a conservative Christian therapist and that is not me at all.”

Unconscious Bias

It also may not be a conscious thought that comes up for you. 

For instance, studies have shown that there are distinct proven biases regarding non-white sounding voices or particular names being a reason that a client doesn’t get called back. 

For instance, Heather Kugelmass examined the call back rates for two people seeking mental health treatment – a white middle class seeker and a black middle class seeker.

Her research demonstrated that callers who sounded white had their calls returned at nearly three times the frequency of those who did not sound white. 

Kugelmass wrote about her results in an article titled, “Sorry, I’m Not Accepting New Patients” for the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

These thoughts or subconscious biases could leave a therapist feeling resistant to calling a potential client back.  

I’ve had some of these thoughts myself.

We are human and even though we are in mental health, we aren’t always going to have bias-free thoughts. 

A good way to overcome this is to stay aware of the possibility of a bias influencing you.  

Floating Up Biases

Only when we can accept the possibility of this happening within us and notice when biases do show up, are we then empowered to make a different choice.

Joiner suggests starting with taking the Harvard Implicit Association Test. 

This is a useful free tool that allows you to explore bias in many different areas. 

If you find one or more biases coming up on a regular basis, you may want to consult with a colleague or bring the issue to your consultation group. 

It also may be appropriate to bring up with your own therapist. 

A Different Choice

Ms. Joiner has an additional suggestion.

“Refer out! 

If you are struggling with a bias and it continues to show up in sessions with your client, even after you’ve done your own work regarding it, you need to refer that client out.

There is nothing shameful about referring out. 

We need to recognize that sometimes another therapist is a better fit for a client than we are.

The bottom line is we do not want to do more harm than good, and by keeping a client where bias shows up, we risk doing just that.

And, remember, bias can be about anything.”

Outside-The-Norm Perspective On Expectations

We each have our own approach and understanding about the various expectations of us as professionals in mental health.  

This article is written with the assumption that we all agree that every potential client should be called back.

However, I have found that not every therapist actually believes that.  

For instance, I have heard statements similar to these on more than one occasion:

• “My caseload is full so there’s no need to call back.”
• “There’s no money in spending my time doing that, so it isn’t a priority for me.”
• “I already know I’m not a fit for them, so I’m not going to take the time to respond.”

Doing What Works

I hope that if you hold similar beliefs, that this article challenges you to consider the ideas below and find what works for you to reach back out to potential clients.

It is important for each of us to hold our self and those in our profession to a high standard of practice and ethics. 

The more we do this, the more our mutual respect for each other can grow. 

By doing so, our communities’ respect for mental health and the services we offer can grow as well.

Most important of all, not returning a call has the potential to do harm. 

It is likely that your potential client is in a vulnerable situation or in distress if they have been motivated to call you. 

It may have been very difficult or even dangerous for that client to make that call. 

Not calling them back can feel like rejection or abandonment and add to their pain. 

It can leave the person feeling like they aren’t important.

Seven Strategies to Help Us All Do Better

Mental health professionals don’t want to harm  anyone and yet there are many of us who struggle with finding a method that works for us to routinely get this task of returning phone calls done .

So what can you do?

My primary motivation in writing this article was to find ways to help myself have an easier time of getting those callbacks completed.  

Here are seven strategies I have learned from colleagues that can help us all do better:

1. Remember what it feels like to be the client not getting a call returned from a potential therapist and then feeling awful because I needed to get help quickly.
2. Being aware of all these reasons listed in this article gives me the ability to push past it.
3. Plan a specific time in my day to return calls and verbally commit to doing it by putting it on my voice mail greeting; then,  protect that time by adding it to my calendar and refuse to let anything disrupt it because it’s important.
4. If my caseload is full, put that on my voice mail greeting instead.
5. If I respond in a timelier manner when using email, put that on my voice mail greeting along with my email address.
6. Depending on your typical client population, it may be well received to text a response instead of calling back. Therapy is changing.  Potential clients that are considered Millennials or Generation Z tend to be more comfortable with communicating by text.
7. Use an app such as SlyDial to make some of your callbacks. This allows you to leave your message directly in a caller’s voice mail.  This has been particularly useful to me, for instance, when I have a day full of back-to-back sessions and I can’t take the chance of having a potentially long phone call.  I can at least let the person know I received their message and ask a question or two, and let them know a time when I am available to speak with them. 

These days, I feel like I have a better understanding of my own resistance to calling potential clients back as well as some insight into why other clinicians may have similar feelings.

I am also happy to say that by better understanding this, I don’t find calling back potential clients to be as difficult as I once did.

 I hope that by sharing my research with you, you’ll be able to say the same! 

If you have struggled to return phone calls to potential clients, I get it!

I look forward to chatting with you!

____________________

                                  
Cathy Wilson, LPC, ACS is a counselor in Littleton, Colorado, and author of One Last Act: A Mental Health Clinician’s Guide to Professional Wills

The post It’s Call Back Time!  Why Therapists Don’t Return Calls To Potential Clients And What To Do About It appeared first on Tamara Suttle.

That’s why I thought it might be a good time to ask my favorite marketing strategist Beth Hayden to drop in today to share her thoughts about how to use webinars to do just that.

Beth brings a keen eye to this topic informed by her work as a  published author, social media guru, professional copywriter, internationally known blogger and content strategist.  

In other words, she knows all about helping therapists build their authority online and in print, too.  

And, because she has a soft spot for my audience, she’s thrown in a little offer for three lucky therapists!

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A Guest Post by Beth Hayden

These days, webinar invitations are so common, we barely notice them.

“Brand New Training!” the invitation says. “Learn new, valuable stuff from a trusted expert!” 

Lots of therapists and coaches (in many different niches and specialties) are using free and paid webinars to increase their online authority, connect with their audience members, and get more clients. 

But what exactly is a webinar?

The word “webinar” originally came from “web seminar” – and it’s simply a seminar or workshop held over the Internet. 

Webinars can be a highly flexible tool for your therapy or coaching practice. You can use webinars to  build your client base, help more people, and even set up a new stream of income!

Here are 5 ways therapists can use webinars to grow their practices:

Beth’s Bright Idea #1: Use free webinars to build an email list of subscribers who know, like, and trust you.

To access your webinar, your participants are going to need login details – and that means each participant will need to give you their email address when they sign up. 

Because you need to collect contact details like this, webinars can be a fast, FUN way to build your email subscriber list (or start building a list, if you haven’t done that yet).

Beth’s Bright Idea #2: Use webinars to build your authority in your field. 

Want to establish a reputation as an expert in your niche, so you can get speaking gigs, write a book, or get more referrals?

Webinars can help you do that, too. 

When you get in front of a webinar audience to present information about your topic (and answer questions from the audience), it boosts your online reputation and makes you more visible in your field. 

People trust the person at the front of the room – whether that person is teaching live, or doing an online presentation. 

When you host a high-quality webinar, it makes people say, “Wow! She knows her stuff!” which is exactly what you want when you’re trying to establish yourself as an expert. 

Beth’s Bright Idea #3: Use paid webinars to expand your business.

Paid webinars can be a great tool for delivering your training, teaching, or coaching services. 

Think about:

• Offering paid online classes that you run from a webinar platform
• Recording your live classes and packaging them up as online products to sell on your site
• Repurposing some of your existing online content into a one-time paid “Master Class.”

Our fearless leader, Tamara Suttle, uses live webinars to deliver the content for her 4-part flagship course, BlogStart for Therapists – and it’s one of her most successful classes!

Beth’s Bright Idea #4: Use promotional webinars to sell online products or programs.

Many of the webinars that come across our digital desktops every day are promotional webinars – which means they include useful content and a sales pitch of some kind. 

 Promotional webinars are a phenomenally effective marketing tool. You can use webinars to sell coaching packages, digital products, online courses, and other products and services. 

But take a lesson from Spiderman, and remember that great power comes with great responsibility. 

If you want to sell during your webinar, you must respect your audience.

Your first (and most important) job is to give away top-quality content. No one will sit through an hour-long sales pitch for your stuff, so make sure your presentation is useful and engaging.

By delivering helpful content, you earn the right to deliver your pitch!

Get More Clients and Bring in More Referrals by Using Webinars in Your Practice

Want help creating an irresistible, relevant, profitable webinar for your practice? I can help.

My name’s Beth Hayden, and I’m a webinar strategist and copywriter. I’ve created hundreds of profitable webinars for clients, with results like doubling sales or achieving 6-figure product launches.

Right now I’m offering a special deal for members of Tamara’s community. 

I’m offering a very small number of limited-time strategy sessions to 3 therapists or coaches who want help designing, promoting, and creating their first webinar. 

During your 90-minute strategy session, I will help you:

• Choose a webinar platform.
• Pick a title for your webinar.
• Figure out how to promote your event and get people to show up.
• Get past your webinar fears and pull off a stress-free webinar.
• Start turning webinars into a consistent sources of income for your practice.

You’ll come out of your strategy session with a clear action plan that tells you exactly what you need to do next to make your webinar a stunning success.

Right now, these strategy sessions are only $299 – but you’ll need to move quickly if you want to grab one of the three available spots. These webinar strategy sessions only available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Click here now to book your session for just $299. 

The post 4 Ways Therapists Can Use Webinars to Grow Their Practices appeared first on Tamara Suttle.

While still in graduate school, I was invited to join my colleague and her husband (who was a newly graduated therapist), Jean and Perry Christenberry, to meet bi-weekly for an entire year to discuss our clients and to begin to learn together about Ericksonian hypnosis and trance work.

It was in that small, intimate group (and not in graduate school) that I began to learn about the gifts that come in giving myself permission to make mistakes and to let go of my family’s rule of perfection.

That was my first experience with peer consultation.

A year later, Perry invited me to join a newly forming and much larger consultation group of peers led by Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Tom Chancellor; there, we spent our time discussing clients and our own clinical and personal challenges through the lens of solution-focused and brief therapies.

It was in that group that I first heard a peer – much more seasoned than me – discuss the recent loss of his client by suicide; it’s also where I learned from another group member as he grappled with his own new and shaky sobriety.

Years later, while attending a psychology conference for feminist therapists in Rhode Island I sat among a group of forty women speaking openly about the many things that we often avoid talking about as therapists.

Up until that group . . . that day, I had thought I was the only one to grapple with these issues.

When I moved from Texas to Colorado I knew no one here in mental health; I had no peer support (neither 1:1 or in a group) and it was the loneliest and scariest year of my professional life.

If you are bored with your work, overwhelmed by challenges you are facing, looking for therapists to refer to and / or just wanting to stretch yourself professionally, I would encourage you to actively seek out clinical consultation.

For me and many other therapists, too – peer consultation gives us a space to tell the truth about our personal and professional strengths and challenges, to learn from and to receive support from our peers.

Licensed Professional Counselor Catherine Wilson is one of those peers who I’ve come to rely on . . . to hold me accountable, to challenge me, and to support me on my personal and professional journey.

Today is seems only appropriate to introduce you to Cathy as she discusses some of the benefits of peer consultation in private practice.

A commonly known concept in the mental health field is peer consultation or case consultation. 

It comes up often in the context of being an ethical obligation we must do for client care in certain situations, such as when a clinician feels they need to talk with someone who has specific skills or when the ethical thing to do isn’t completely clear.

It is a very important part of our work.

At the same time, there is a lot more to consultation than simply an ethical obligation.

For my entire mental health career, I have always had some form of supervision or consultation. 

Some of it was required; most of it wasn’t. 

Peer Consultation and Success as a Professional Counselor

It wasn’t until recently that I’ve realized how important it has also been for my own well-being, self-confidence, and dare I say even my success as a professional counselor.

Here are a few ways that I have found peer consultation to help me:

Education and Skill Building – In one of the peer consultation groups that I attend, we have a guest speaker or one of us presents on a topic each month to share knowledge. 

My skills as a counselor have grown a lot by participating in this – both as a presenter and as a participant. 

Even meeting one-on-one, we have the opportunity to learn from our peers in this consultation group. 

Networking – Without networking or reaching out in some way, you may not have another way of knowing your peers well enough to consult with someone. 

The term is usually used in the context of building a business and that is definitely an important reason to network. 

In this field though, networking not only helps you build a list of professionals to refer to and get referrals from but it also allows you to have a list of people you know have skills or knowledge to support you in specific areas. 

Relief from Isolation – Being a counselor can be an isolating job. 

I own a group practice and there are eight of us in all, but we often go weeks without any contact. 

Sometimes that contact is only a quick wave and eye contact when two of us are in between sessions.   

Being able to regularly meet with peers can give us some relief from that isolation.

I believe that isolation from others who do the same work can lead to a couple of problems. 

One is loneliness.   

And, a second is that a therapist’s skills can stagnate without the learning, growth, and validation that can come from discussing the work you do with peers.  

Self-Care – This one was a recent revelation for me in the past few years.  

In the first few years I was in private practice, I knew I needed to be networking and getting to know my peers. 

There were at least two reasons for this: one was so that I had other clinicians to refer to if I wasn’t able to help a particular client and the other was to get referrals and grow my own business. 

I made it a fairly regular practice to reach out to other clinicians to set up meeting for lunch or coffee, to get to know each other better. 

In the beginning, it was a chore. 

I’m an introvert and it felt like “marketing” myself and it was hard to get myself to do it. 

I kept at it and usually enjoyed each meeting. 

In the past few years though, I realized that these other professionals I met in groups or one-on-one were a critical part of my own self-care. 

Spending time with them had become a significant support system for me! 

This is true for me in the groups I am part of as well as each and every person I meet with one-on-one. 

It has become so much more than just “consulting; today I realize it is also connecting and recharging.

The Many Faces of Peer Consultation

Peer consultation takes many forms:

• Consultation Groups – My favorite, especially a well-organized group!
• One-on-One Meetings – Meeting another professional on a regular basis for short meetings to get to know one another, consult, refer, and enjoy the connection.
• Seeking a Professional with a Specific Skill – Finding another professional to help with a client in an area I’m not as familiar with or a clinician with a specialty I need to understand better.
• Large Networking and Consultation Groups – Larger groups are often good to be part of and although not everyone will make every meeting, I have the opportunity to meet several colleagues at once with less effort on my part.
• Social Media Groups – On Facebook and Meetup in particular, there are many specialized groups that allow therapists to come together who have similar interests or pursuits. For instance, on Facebook, I am part of several counseling-related groups that allow for sharing of business and clinical information as well as connecting with other professionals.
• Employees/Members of a Group or Agency – Depending on the organization, therapists may also have the opportunity to consult with others in their own organization.

Investing in Peer Consultation

Should we pay for this?

The short answer here is yes, of course, we should!

Our time as professionals is valuable.  

To expand on that, it is absolutely appropriate to compensate a peer for sharing their time and hard-earned knowledge with you if you seek them out.  

It is also appropriate to compensate a peer who puts in the time, effort, and skill to organize a group.

What Makes a Valuable Consultation Group?

What makes a valuable consultation group?

As I said above, this is my favorite form of peer consultation.  

And I think when a group is organized well it can have limitless value to you as a professional and it will be well worth the cost of participating. 

Here are a few of the qualities I believe are most important to consider when choosing a consultation group:

• Organized – Meetings occur at a regular time, day, and frequency; there is an agenda; expectations of members and the group leader are clear; group structure is reviewed on a regular and consistent basis (for instance, each year there is discussion of what works and doesn’t in the group, potential changes, etc.).
• Education/Skill Building – A variety of speakers and topics is offered.
• Continuing Education Units (CEUs) – The group leader has taken steps to allow members to earn continuing education credit for participating (if this is available in your state or for your professional organization; I’m in Colorado and time in a consultation group does count towards our CEUs for licensure).
• Diversity – Members come from a variety of therapeutic approaches to you gain multiple perspectives in case consultation, feedback, and learning opportunities.
• Size of Group – The group shouldn’t be too small or too large.  My personal perspective is that a group of approximately ten professionals allows for good discussion, everyone has a chance to share and be heard, and if one or two can’t make it you still have enough individuals to make it valuable to those who are there.
• Closed Group – Once the group is formed, there is some structure to how members can be added and also requires that members commit to a certain amount of time.
• Group Membership – Potential members must apply to join the group.  This allows the group leader to assess whether a particular person would fit well with an existing group or a group that he or she is forming.
• Safety In the Group – The most important quality is that the group feels “safe.”  To get the very most out of a consultation group it is essential that members trust each other. The best groups will have members who know that all members of the group will respect the confidentiality of the group; all will know that each group member operates with ethics and integrity; each person knows they can be vulnerable and cared for by the group.

For six of the last eight years, I have been part of a consultation group that Tamara leads near her office in Castle Rock, Colorado. 

This group has every one of the qualities listed above and has been one of the most important things I have done to succeed in private practice.  

What Has Your Experience Been?

Tell us how you engage in peer consultation.

I hope you’ll take a moment to drop in below to chat! 

_______________________________________

Cathy Wilson, LPC, ACS is a counselor and director of a group mental health practice called LifePaths Counseling Center  in Littleton, Colorado.   She and her colleagues help people deal with mental health issues such as addictions, relationship problems, life transitions, and trauma. 

The post The Real Value Of Peer Consultation In Private Practice appeared first on Tamara Suttle.

In 2017, when I was looking for someone to write a guest post for therapists highlighting the difference between service and emotional support animals, Licensed Professional Counselor and Certified Rehabilitation Counselor Kimberly R. Duff offered to step up and take on the task.

Kimberly is particularly well-suited to address this topic because she is a Licensed Professional Counselor who specializes in working with individuals who facing challenges impacted by their own chronic illnesses and/or disabilities.

Today she is joining us to talk about what every therapist needs to know before responding to a client’s request for a letter verifying a need for an emotional support animal.

___________________

A Guest Post by Kimberly R. Duff, LPC, CRC

As therapists, we may be asked to write a letter for a client to obtain an emotional support animal.  

This concept may be unfamiliar to the mental health counselor.

Sometimes it is difficult to determine when a client is attempting to take advantage of his or her psychological condition and when this is a legitimate request.

Individuals who are blind or visually impaired are clearly covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and are permitted to bring a guide dog into public places as an accommodation, but what about persons who use an animal for emotional support?

In this post, I examine these questions, explain the difference between emotional support and service animals and also explore the federal laws in the USA that pertain to these animals in the areas of housing, travel, and public accommodation.

I will also provide some guidelines for therapists who are asked to write a letter on behalf of a counseling client with an emotional or other psychiatric disability.

Service Animals

A service animal is an animal that has received special training to help a person with a physical, sensory, cognitive or psychiatric disability.

These animals are protected by Title II and Title III of the ADA.

The work of the service animal must be directly related to the person’s disability; note that a letter from a doctor or other professional does not make the animal a verified service animal.

Examples of service animals include guide dogs, animals that assist persons with a hearing impairment, and animals that provide a signal of an impending seizure to persons with epilepsy.

Service animals are specially trained to help a person with a disability and are protected by the ADA.

Emotional Support / Comfort Animals

An emotional support animal, sometimes known as a comfort animal,  may help provide support to an individual by helping mitigate symptoms of depression, relieving loneliness, and / or providing companionship. 

Because emotional support animals are not trained to provide a service to a person with a disability, these animals are not covered by Title II and Title III of the ADA.

As a mental health professional, you should consult laws in your specific jurisdiction regarding emotional support animals because they do vary from place to place.

Emotional support animals do not have specialized training and these animals are not protected by the ADA.

Housing Rules Pertaining to Service and Emotional Support Animals

Under the ADA, the owner of a housing facility is required to allow a service animal on the premises.

The owner is not allowed to charge a fee or deposit for the service animal.

Additionally, owners of the housing may be required to allow emotional support animals for persons with psychiatric or other disabilities.

Landlords may require proof of disability and verification that the animal is an emotional support animal.

Travel Laws Pertaining to Service and Emotional Support Animals

Under the ADA, service animals must be allowed to travel with the person with a disability.

The transportation provider may not charge a fee for the animal and the person with a disability is not required to provide prior notice.

Individuals wishing to travel with an emotional support animal on an airplane may be required to provide documentation from a licensed mental health professional stating the person’s mental health diagnosis.

The required statement should explain that the animal is necessary for the person’s mental health functioning or treatment.

The professional should also state that the individual is under his or her care, the professional’s title, state or jurisdiction, and the date of licensure.

Service Animals and Emotional Support Animals in Public Spaces

Verified service animals are covered by the ADA and must be permitted in public spaces such as restaurants and shopping centers.

Emotional support and therapy animals are not protected by the ADA and should not be allowed in public places unless the establishment permits pets or other animals.

The general public (and specifically pet owners) who want to take advantage of the widespread ignorance on this subject may attempt to falsify documents or signage in order to bring their pets into these same public spaces.

For a comical but disturbing account of this phenomenon, check out this article in The New Yorker titled Pets Allowed: Why are Animals Allowed in So Many Places They Shouldn’t Be?

A mental health professional is not qualified to provide documentation for a service animal.

Service animals such as guide dogs complete specialized training programs to be able to assist a person with a disability.

Licensed mental health professionals do possess the qualifications to verify dogs as emotional support animals by verifying that the individual has a psychiatric disability as described by the DSM 5.

The Letter of Verification for Emotional Support Animals

The letter of verification should include:

• The professional’s license, state or jurisdiction of the license
• The date(s) of the license,
• The individual’s clinical diagnosis,
• A statement that the individual is under the care of this professional, and
• That the animal is necessary for the individuals’ functioning/ treatment.

Regulations regarding emotional support animals are often set by individual states and municipalities and can vary greatly from state to state and city to city.

Persons with an emotional support animal are often legally covered by laws pertaining to housing and travel.

They are typically not legally able to take their emotional support animal into public places unless the establishment allows the general public to bring pets.

The individual with an emotional support animal may be required to show a letter of verification to:

• The owner of the apartment or other type of housing and / or
• An airline provider prior to a flight.

When faced with the request to write a letter for client related to emotional support and / or service animals, I would encourage you to check out some of the additional resources below:

• Fact Sheet on Service Animals (ADA Nation Network, 2017)
• Frequently Asked Questions about Service Animals and the ADA (US Department of Justice, July 20, 2015)
• Emotional Support Pet
• Psychiatric Service Dogs & Emotional Support Animals: Access to Public Places & Other Settings
• Service Animals and Emotional Support Animals (Southwest ADA Center, 2014)

And, of course, if I’ve left anything out or you’ve got questions related to emotional support or service animals, I’m happy to talk below!    

What experiences have you had in working with service, emotional support, and therapy animals?

[This post was last updated on 07-20-19]

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Kimberly R. Duff, LPC, CRC practices as a Licensed Professional Counselor and a Certified Rehabilitation Counselor in Acworth, Cartersville, and Marietta, Georgia.   Kimberly specializes in assisting clients with psychological issues related to disability and chronic illness.

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The post What Every Therapist Needs To Know About Service And Emotional Support Animals appeared first on Tamara Suttle.