
The weak scientific case for emotional support animals - rafaelc
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/2/23/17012116/emotional-support-animal-airplane-psychology-research-dogs
======
bucketsjimbo
While people obviously abuse this and I don't need to bring my dog on the
plane:

My dog gives me reason to keep living and not kill myself on my darkest days.

When I wake up sweating and shaking and panicing from anxiety, my dog gives me
something soft and comforting to hold and pet. A dog reacts and loves you and
distracts you by licking and being playful and in your face.

Having been alone and suffering from this for a decade prior, I can say for
sure my dog helps me.

What croc of a psychiatrist can't see this.

Edit:

As for being a crutch, anxiety is not logical. Sometimes there isn't something
to confront. Just a fear of impending doom from some unknown source..no matter
what you tell yourself, and how much you know there is nothing, you still
shake, heart pounding, sweating, physical pain from anxiety.

I could take medicine and be dependent on that, or I could hug my dog

~~~
LargeWu
As somebody on anxiety meds...they help, man. At least they help me.

You wouldn't begrudge somebody for being dependent on cancer medicine, would
you? Or heart medicine? I would rather be dependent on meds than suffer the
quality of life issues I used to have. Not sure why your opposition to
treating anxiety pharmacologically, but I would encourage you to at least talk
to a doctor and explore what medication could do for you.

~~~
bucketsjimbo
Was not bashing taking medication. Sorry that was not my intent.

SSRIs and such can be helpful, but I would like to stay away from xanax and
things like that. I have known many people who became dependent and had their
life ruined. I know it depends on the person and their background, but I'd
like to avoid it all together personally.

I'd prefer to hug a dog than take potentially addictive medications.

------
markbnj
Do they train emotional support animals to be used to unusual environments? I
suppose it must be roughly the same sort of training given to sight assistance
dogs. I'm pretty sure if I took either of my dogs on an aircraft, for example,
any emotional benefit I derived would be countered by their extreme anxiety
and fright.

~~~
mturmon
My family had a licensed therapy dog. For about 3-4 years, he did weekly dog
therapy at a nearby foster facility for adolescent boys. The particular
benefit to those kids was that they had a chance to love a creature, when of
course their own family was not present to extend love to them. This was a big
deal for some of those kids. They had a rough life - the facility was OK, but
there's no avoiding the circumstances: you have no parents.

The licensing that we got (as of ~15 years ago) was nowhere near the level
that is given to sight assistance dogs. However, other license authorities (I
think it was TDI) were more strenuous, and my dog would not have passed them.
For instance, therapy dogs had to be calm if a rabbit or cat was nearby. I'm
not sure what regulations are in place now, I assume it must have tightened up
since then.

In pre-9/11 days, my dog rode in the airplane cabin twice. He was chill, even
calmed another passenger down on the outbound 3-hour flight by sitting in
their lap.

~~~
kec
If you're in the US, any license you got was snake oil. There is no licensure
for service or emotional support/therapy animals.

There are no legal requirements or standards for either in terms of training
either, the only standard is that if the animal is being disruptive they can
ask you to remove it, but must then provide reasonable accommodation to the
disabled person in the animal's absence.

~~~
astura
No, they didn't get "snake oil." The particular foster care facility (or
government) required a dog visiting their children to be licensed by
${company} before it was allowed into the facility. The GP had their dog go
through the requirements ${company} specified and ${company} gave the dog
their seal of approval.

It's exactly like if a company requires you to get a professional
certification from, say, Oracle.

It's also pretty reasonable. if they are going to let dogs around their
residents that they'd want a third party making sure the dog has a temperament
suitable for that and certain amount of training - the facility doesn't know
how to tell if a dog would be fit for that purpose.

It's like saying getting your video game rated by the ESRB is "snake oil"
because "there's no legal requirements or standards for rating video games."
Yet if you want to sell your video game at Walmart or Toys R Us you're going
to have to get it rated by the ESRB.

You're also confused about where the "reasonable accommodations" comes in.

~~~
kec
The difference is that the ADA has standards which do not require licensure.
You cannot legally require someone show you a service dog license. Where
emotional support animals are protected by law (namely, housing and air
transport) you also cannot require a license (though in those cases you can
require a letter from a health professional stating the need).

Requiring or claiming to provide licensure for animals outside of what the
laws state and require is scummy and just confuses the issue as to what is and
isn't allowed by law.

------
AcerbicZero
They had a support/stress dog at several of the bases I spent time at in Iraq,
which I thought was pretty cool. They were part of the combat stress medical
units if I recall.

I don't know the true efficacy, but a close friend of mine who was in pretty
bad shape said the dog helped cheer him up. If nothing else just having the
opportunity to pet a dog and forget about things for a bit must have been
nice.

------
gerbilly
Who says that emotional support can even be measured by science?

In other words who cares?

If you are lacking in emotional support, and then start receiving it, you
don't need science to validate your experience.

You just know.

~~~
probably_wrong
> In other words who cares?

Landlords, for one, who have to deal with tenants that argue their E.S. animal
should be excepted from the "no pets" policy. Also H.R. departments (what if
an employee brings a bird to work?), hospitals, and places where food is
served ("Waiter! That guy's dog licked my plate!").

It's one of those situations in which the potential for abuse is pretty big,
and so there's an actual interest in differentiating "this dog helps me cope
with life" from "you have to allow this untrained animal here thanks to poorly
defined laws and paperwork with no clear meaning".

~~~
iamcasen
If it's legal to own a pet, then in my opinion, it cannot be made illegal for
a pet to live anywhere. The fact that hotels, businesses, landlords, or
whatever can deny entry to a pet is simply ridiculous.

The same rules for humans should apply. If the pet is a nuisance, or
destructive, or loud or whatever, then that pet can be removed just like a
human would be removed in the same circumstances.

------
ikeyany
_" What exactly is it about our society that makes mental issues so widespread
that emotional support animals are so needed?"_ is a question I would like to
see answered with more coverage.

~~~
vhold
Not enough animals? We used to be around animals all the time.

------
thinkloop
The problem is that the alternative to bringing your pet in the cabin is
terrible. In cargo they can be lost like luggage, temperature and pressure
controls are not as strictly maintained, the animal is subject to extreme
noises and gyrations - it is a scary and traumatic experience. Pets are much
closer to children than objects for most people - it is like putting your
child down there.

The reason for the abuse of the ESA system is that there are no alternatives
provided. Your only options are to torture your pet, or abuse the system.
There is no amount of money you can pay to avoid it - you can't book an entire
row if you wanted.

I think this issue needs to be addressed, and a process formally
institutionalized to allow pets to travel with their humans. It is very rare
for anyone to be bothered when a pet is on board - most of the time it brings
other passengers joy - in the cases where there is a problem, easy
arrangements are made that satisfy everyone.

~~~
Beamer92
This is a huge issue I agree with. I'd never fly with my dog in cargo.
However, one thing that I think gets overlooked is that in accommodating
people's pet, are we being unaccommodating to others? What about those who
have pet allergies? They would expect to be able to fly in peace as well. Or
people with life experience that makes them afraid of dogs. You'd think the
airline would be easy to work with but is that really on the person with
allergies to make themselves comfortable when the argument for ESAs is that we
should all be accommodating to these people and their animals/issues? Do we
need to have pet friendly/no pet flight options? Or do we need the airlines to
be pro-active in accommodating for people with their pets when they could just
as easily say "No. Deal with it"? Good luck convincing the airlines that they
need to accommodate for society. They won't even make planes someone over 6'5"
can sit in comfortably.

Outside of Cats/Dogs, if somebody sits down next to me with their Emotional
Support Snake there's gonna be some loud WTFs and GTFOs and just a problem
overall. Could the airline talk to individual passengers about this snake
being near them on their flight beforehand? Sure. Are they going to? Nope.
Better to just say there will be no gosh darn snakes on this gosh darn plane.

~~~
thinkloop
> What about those who have pet allergies? > Or people with life experience
> that makes them afraid of dogs

These are quite rare, but they happen, and the solution has always been easy
and amicable: move some people around, with the dog owner making the most
compromise.

> Do we need to have pet friendly/no pet flight options?

This would be great. Right now even with ESA's there is a limit on the number
of pets that can be on a flight, so you would have to find a different flight
if the one you wanted already had some. By no means am I suggesting there
should be a free-for-all. Only to have some limited arrangement where everyone
can be happy.

> Could the airline talk to individual passengers about this snake being near
> them on their flight beforehand?

This kind of messaging is relatively easy nowadays, ranging from a little
doggy icon on the website marking a specific flight as being pet-friendly, all
the way to personalized sms/emails (which are already in place).

Humans live densely, there are very few actions you can take that affect no-
one in no way. We are dealing with this overly brutely in my opinion, there
exists a configuration that increases net world happiness that we are not
taking advantage of.

------
xivzgrev
There are essentially two issues with ESAs - poor behavior and lying to avoid
fees.

For the first there should be a framework of cerification. If you want to
bring an ESA it should pass third party certification with different standards
for housing and flights.

For the second we should look at alternatives. If you want to fly with pet you
have to pay hundreds, often well excess of your own ticket, for them to fly
cargo (unless they can fly under your seat in which case it's $125). Why so
high fees / bad experience? If a pet owner labels their pet ESA the pet gets
to fly with them for free. Why can't pets fly free in cabin like infants under
2? If the pet is over a certain size, then person has to buy another seat
(just like an older child).

I think the certification standards and equalizing experience for pets would
dramatically lower potential for abuse.

These are shorter term fixes. In the long term we should keep building
evidence on the question of effectiveness.

~~~
astura
There's actually four issues, add in concerns about animal welfare and
concerns about the people who don't want to share a plane with animals due to
allergies and phobias. (or personal preference)

------
gameswithgo
oh, I can assure you there are a great many of us who don't find this lack of
evidence surprising!

------
gwbas1c
If I get a prescription over the internet that says I need a vacation, does
that mean that the airline has to give me free airfare?

------
txsh
Surprising? Just to the hacks at Vox.

~~~
sctb
Would you please start commenting substantively, like the guidelines ask?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
tw1010
To dismiss something because there is a lack of scientific research about it
is just as irrational as believing in something despite strong evidence
against it.

~~~
astura
The article and the person interviewed did not "dismiss something because
there is a lack of scientific research about it."

~~~
tw1010
You are correct, there is nothing wrong with what the people in the article
are saying. But I think we'd be lying to ourselves if we deny the fact that
the reason this article is in discussion here on HN is in large part not
because we're up in arms about the lack of scientific rigour about this niche
area of knowledge, but because there is a tendency in our community (sometimes
denied when explicitly pointed out) to tag things we suspect or would like to
be invalid as false (rather than simply inconclusive) when there is no
evidence to support it one way or another.

