Mental Health Support

About the webinar:

Many people with mental health disabilities find that having a psychiatric service or emotional support animal improves their daily lives and their mental health and wellness. Learn the difference between these assistance animals and your rights regarding public access and reasonable accommodations.

We will:

• Identify the differences between psychiatric service animals and emotional support animals.

• Review the laws that protect our rights to have assistance animals, specifically regarding public access and reasonable accommodations.

• Discover how psychiatric service and emotional support animals promote recovery and wellness for people with mental health disabilities.

• Explore hypothetical scenarios to improve our understanding about our rights and discover the benefits of having assistance animals for our mental health and wellbeing.

Speakers:

Debi Davis is a person with lived experience and longtime mental health advocate. Ms. Davis volunteered as a mental health patients’ rights advocate for 10 years and founded a client self-advocacy group called We C.A.N. (Client Advocacy Now). For the last 12 years, Ms. Davis has worked in the Peer Self-Advocacy program at Disability Rights California facilitating self-advocacy groups in crisis residential facilities, and in-patient psychiatric units.