Animal-assisted therapy is slowly becoming a recognized treatment to help service personnel who suffer from stress disorder and other mental disorders after their deployment to Afghanistan and or Iraq, according to a report by JConline.com

At this stage, the therapy is limited to a few Army installations, which include the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda Maryland.

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The therapy's program includes the use of dogs during the treatment of patients who act as co-therapists.

Animal-assisted therapy involves trained dogs working as service animals. Part of their work responsibilities are to visit soldier-patients confined in hospitals.

One Army service personnel, Staff Sgt. Dennis Swols, returned to the U.S. agitated and very mercurial in temper. He was deployed three times to Iraq and Afghanistan and coming back home to settle down was a hard change in his life.

According to Swols, the negative impact of his deployment and being in the battlefield left him emotional and psychological scars. He was unable to talk about his experience in the war.

Swols was diagnosed by army doctors to have post-traumatic stress from the war.

Then came Lexy, a 5-year-old German shepherd that Swols met at Robinson health Clinic at Fort Bragg. Lexy provides Swols a momentary distraction from the scars the war left him.

According to Swols, he had a hard time opening up to people and talking about his deployments, including what he had seen in battle.

Swols is with the 82nd Airborne's 4th Brigade Combat Team. He was part of the 2001 Afghanistan invasion and was again deployed to Baghdad in 2003. Being sent to war was difficult to Swols.

The Army is struggling as it tries to address the myriad disorders its soldiers are facing. Trained to stand in front of danger, even death, it's difficult for returnees from war to seek treatment, open up and healthily discuss the things that trouble them.

The use of Lexy through the Animal-assisted therapy makes it easier for the likes of Swols to calm down and slowly deal with disorder with professional medical help.

Tagsanimal-assisted therapy, mental disorder, U.S. Army, post-war traumatic stress