Rx: One Dog, Daily – The Rise of Social Prescriptions

What if your next prescription didn’t come from a pharmacy—but from a shelter?

In this eye-opening episode, host Stacie explores the global rise of social prescriptions, a revolutionary shift in healthcare that trades pills for purpose. From the UK’s National Health Service to community health programs around the world, doctors are now “prescribing” activities like dog walking, volunteering, and time in nature to combat anxiety, depression, isolation, and more.

At the center of this movement? Dogs. 🐾

Learn how rescue dogs are becoming powerful agents of change—naturally delivering emotional support, structure, connection, and healing in ways traditional medicine can’t. We break down the science, the stats, and the stories behind this shift, and ask: Why isn’t the U.S. following suit?

This episode dives deep into how The Human-Canine Alliance is bridging that gap—with technology, training, and a vision to make “One Dog, Daily” a real prescription in America’s mental health toolkit.

If you’ve ever believed there’s more to healing than pills, this is your episode.

Resources used in this episode:

• NHS Social Prescribing Overview
• World Health Organization – Loneliness and Social Isolation
• U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on Loneliness (2023)
• Journal of Public Health (Oxford Academic)
• Pet Partners – Therapy Animal Program & Research
• American Heart Association – Dog Ownership and Heart Health
• Human-Animal Bond Research Institute (HABRI)
• University of British Columbia – Therapy Dog Study

Transcript

 Imagine you're battling overwhelming anxiety, seeking help, only to be met with long wait lists and a prescription pad. This is the reality for millions of Americans today.

On the other side, mental health professionals are inundated with patients, constrained by time, and often limited to offering pharmaceutical solutions. The system is stretched thin, leaving both providers and those in need searching for more.  

This is The Human-Canine Alliance podcast. I'm Stacie, and today we're taking a holistic look at mental health in America, exploring the systemic dependence on prescription medications, a phenomenon we call America's Pill-Bond.

While medication has its place, the broader impact on our society suggests it's time to seriously consider alternative options.

In this episode, we'll delve into the current state of our mental healthcare system and uncover the incredible potential to shift America's Human-Pill-Bond into a Human-Canine Bond.

Let's get started.

I want to start off by taking a moment to understand the spectrum of mental health diagnoses that many Americans face daily.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fifth Edition, these include anxiety disorders, mood disorders, obsessive compulsive disorders, trauma and stressor related disorders, neurodevelopmental disorders, schizophrenia spectrum, and other psychotic disorders and personality disorders.

Now, what does this look like in real life? Most people don't walk around saying, I have a generalized anxiety disorder, right?

They say, I can't shut off my brain at night, or

I feel numb all the time, or

I'm exhausted, but I can't rest, Or

I slept 10 hours and I don't feel like I went to sleep at all.

I just want to feel okay again.

Mental health issues don't always come with a label, a hospital stay, or a breakdown moment. Most often, they're quietly woven into our daily lives and a lot of us are just dealing with them, you guys, and we all can relate to that at one level or another, whether we deal with it ourselves or we know somebody else who does, right?

It's the quality of our thoughts when we wake up. The resilience we carry after hard news. The strength behind our relationships and the voice we hear inside our own heads.

That is what mental health is.

Picture a combat veteran. In his forties trying to reintegrate into civilian life, but can't escape the sounds of war in his head. He avoids crowds, flinches at loud noises, and hasn't had more than three hours of sleep in weeks.

A retiree whose spouse died last year after decades of building a life together. Now the house is too quiet. The days are too long. Grief is isolation, and so few call to check in anymore.

A working mom juggling conference calls and carpool lines. Everyone sees her as high functioning, but she cries in the shower every morning. The weight of unspoken depression and constant guilt feels like it's pulling her under.

A college student in her twenties trying to balance grades, work, social pressure, but she hasn't been sleeping. Her heart races in class, she cancels plans more than she keeps them.  

A teenager glued to their phone in their room, slowly fading away from the world.

These are the faces of mental health in America.

Mental health affects how we eat, how we sleep, how we cope, how we relate to others, and even how our bodies function physically. It's deeply connected to everything from chronic pain to gut health, to heart disease.

So, when over 50% of opioid prescriptions are written for people with mental health struggles.

When people with psychiatric conditions are two and a half times more likely to misuse them.

It reveals something deeper than addiction.

It tells us that we're not just numbing pain.

We're medicating emotions.

We're medicating loneliness.

We're medicating trauma.

We are medicating burnout, heartbreak, anxiety, isolation.

Not treating it. Not healing it, not understanding it, just masking it and hoping that the fog lifts.

And when someone does become dependent on opioids, for at least 60% of them, their substance use isn't just about getting high. They also live with conditions like anxiety, depression, PTSD. So it's about trying to feel normal or quiet their thoughts or make the pain stop.

And what do we do as a society? We blame them. We look down on them. We try to distance ourselves from them. We say, we don't know what to do with someone like that. We don't know how to talk to them, how to treat them. And even when it's our own family member, we will do what we can for them to a certain extent, and then we kind of say, "i'm so sorry." I need to live my life.

Which, who can blame someone? Right? But a lot of it is our own fault as a society.  

Okay, let's take a break and when we come back, we're gonna take this globally. I hope you continue to listen.

Hey. Hey. Thanks for listening to the commercial break and not skipping through. 

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Hello. Hello. Thanks for sticking around. Welcome back. This is The Human-Canine Alliance and I am your host, Stacie. Let's get started.

As we look around the world, many countries are shifting away from the pill first mentality and embracing alternative non pill solutions.

Countries like Germany, Finland, and the UK have begun integrating social prescribing and animal assisted therapy as key components of their mental health approach.

For example, in the UK, social prescribing is transforming how healthcare professionals treat anxiety and depression. Doctors prescribe not just medication, but activities like joining a local gardening group, getting involved in creative arts, or spending time in nature.

It's proven to reduce social isolation, build community ties, and ease symptoms of anxiety. These are things doctors are prescribing, okay?

In Germany, animal assisted therapy is often recommended for PTSD. Veterans and trauma survivors work with therapy dogs to build trust, manage symptoms, and find emotional relief in ways that medication alone cannot provide .

And in Finland exercise is considered a key mental health tool. Doctors frequently recommend regular physical activity to treat mild to moderate depression, and it has profound effects on patient outcomes.

In contrast, the US spends a staggering $282 billion every year on mental illness treatment, primarily focused on symptom management, not prevention or holistic care. This largely pharmaceutical based approach has led to a cyclical medication crisis where more and more people are relying on pills just to get through their days.

Costing businesses over $2 trillion in lost productivity every year due to absenteeism, burnout, and turnover.

And the most tragic of consequences you guys in America. Over the past two decades, the suicide rate has increased by 30%, making suicide, the second leading cause of death for young Americans, aged 10 to 35.

Not cancer.

Not car accidents.

Suicide, suicide.

As of this recording, the United States ranks as one of the highest suicide rates for 25 to 34 year olds among high income nations like Canada, Australia, and Switzerland.

How is it that we rank at the top of the suicide rates for young people across high income nations? what are we doing wrong? Why are our young people so depressed? Obviously we're not doing something right, or at the very least, maybe we should try something else.

The consequences of this gap in mental healthcare reach far beyond the individual. The US has a firearm homicide rate 25 times higher than peer nations like the UK, Canada, Germany, and Japan.

And mass shootings between 2000-2014, Americans who make up less than 5% of the global population accounted for 31% of mass shooting perpetrators.

Many of these mass shooters had a documented history of untreated or mismanaged mental illness, and in the US 80% of mass shooters had some form of undiagnosed, untreated, or mismanaged mental health struggle.

okay, so what can we do now? People are drowning in burnout. Loneliness, trauma and disconnection, but dogs naturally offer a combination of cognitive, emotional, physical, and nature based therapies. And here's the cool part. These are all proven alternative therapies for anxiety, depression, PTSD, and even opioid addiction.

Let's just break this down for a second.

First up cognitive therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy, it is therapy where you learn to reframe negative thought patterns and get this when you're spending time with a dog, you're already engaging in this kind of therapy, whether it's teaching them a new trick, responding to cues, or simply bonding. Dogs give us these little moments of cognitive focus that help reset our brains, almost like an unspoken version of CBT.

Then there is emotional therapy. This one is huge, especially in mental health. Studies show that just being around service dogs can reduce PTSD symptoms by 82%. That's more than double the results we see with traditional medications, and it's not just because of their companionship. They help us regulate our emotions, reduce stress, and offer unconditional comfort, which is exactly what emotional therapy aims to do.

Dogs also naturally give us physical therapy. Regular movement is one of the best ways to combat anxiety and depression. And here's another fun fact. Exercise-based therapies have been proven to reduce opioid withdrawal symptoms by about 30%.

Last but not least, we can't forget about the power of nature-based therapy.

Studies have shown that spending time outdoors can significantly reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. Dogs are nature in action, whether they're running in the park, hiking on a trail, or simply soaking up the sunshine with you, they naturally help us tap into therapeutic benefits of nature and we don't even realize it. We just take it for granted most of the time. 

Okay, so here's the takeaway. Dogs are naturally offering these therapies.

Cognitive, emotional, physical, nature-based, without being trained. This is just something they naturally offer and create within a human canine relationship, and yet thousands of dogs sit behind cages, suffering societal isolation in the same way that humans are.

Anxiety, depression, loneliness.

And then far too often a dog is lost to euthanasia and a human is lost to suicide.

I truly believe that we can do better. We can offer better solutions to America's mental health crisis.

And of those involves the bond between humans and dogs.

This is where The Human-Canine Alliance comes in. We are here to disrupt the current thinking of mental health solutions by turning America's Pill-Bond into a Canine-Bond leading to less cost, less death, and two industries, becoming foundations for future generations to come.

Emotional pain isn't a diagnosis, it's a signal. And in America, we are silencing it. And we're paying the price for it.

Next episode, I am going to be highlighting the Times Magazine, How Dogs Think; Inside the Canine Mind. I have been reading more articles that are science-based, they are compelling, just super exciting to share and so relevant to The Human-Canine Alliance and what we're trying to do here. I just love reading about the supporting facts and the science that is truly being researched all around the world and,

I just, I really believe the human-canine bond is an up and coming solution to mental health crisis all over, the world, to be honest with you. But I'm starting in America because that's where I live and that's where I see it causing the most problems.

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Anyway, thank you so much for listening to The Human-Canine Alliance podcast. I am Stacie, and I hope you continue to listen.