Psychiatric service dog letter for a client?
Hi! A client I’ve been seeing since January asked if I could write her a letter stating that her dog is a psychiatric service dog because she’s trained the dog to do medication tasks and sit on her lap when she’s anxious. The dog has no formal training though. This client is diagnosed bipolar II (dx’ed long before she ever became my client). I have already written an ESA letter for her a few months ago.
My immediate leaning was no, because it doesn’t seem within our scope (I’m an LMFT) to certify that a dog is a psychiatric service animal. After googling it I still don’t really have a clear answer, but it was actually less strict than I thought because apparently they don’t necessarily require professional training.
What sucks is that this client has had trauma with other helping professionals before and is super prone to feeling dismissed/uncared for, and I know already that she can’t financially go the route of professional service dog training. This is California if that matters.
What would y’all do?
ETA: I let her know that I cannot write it as it’s not in my scope. She was overall very understanding and thanked me for consulting about it (I did ask therapists I know irl too lol) before just saying no. Thanks all for the input, it was the little push I needed! Our jobs are lovely but also sometimes hard!