Interview with Liam Klein; The Impact of Service Dogs on PTSD

Impact of service dogs.

Hi! I'm Liam. I’m 15 years old. I have been told that I’m too intelligent for my own good and I have PTSD. I developed this disorder after being abused when I was eight years old and watching the same thing happen to a sibling. After being hospitalized shortly before my ninth birthday (yes, I’m still bitter about the fact that I spent my birthday in a psych ward), I was put on a variety of medications including antidepressants, and antipsychotics, etc. You name it, I tried it. However, due to a quirk in my biochemistry, as though I wasn’t quirky enough already, they all had the opposite of the desired effect. Thus, as I clearly couldn’t be medicated, it was recommended that I get a service dog. Although it took seven tries, I’m glad I got the dog that I did. Cliché as it sounds, Einstein quite literally saved my life. And once I was stable again, I wanted to help other kids like me, who were suffering from a disability that they didn’t even understand.Since there was no foundation I could find that addressed this dire need, four years ago, I decided to create my own, to help other kids like me gain control over their PTSD instead of letting it control them. There are SO many more youths affected by PTSD than you would think, but we don't get half as much attention as if we were adults or wounded warriors. I mean, there are a lot of psychiatrists who don’t even believe that children CAN be affected by PTSD. That’s how little people acknowledge it.Living with PTSD is incredibly chaotic; it feels like being caught in a web that’s ever-growing, ever-expanding, trapping you more and more completely as time goes on and leaving you utterly powerless. That thought process, combined with my love of arachnids, was the inspiration behind the name Chaotic Spyder.

Liam Klein

liam@chaoticspyder.org

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