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The weak scientific case for emotional support animals
- Fricken 9y agoI'm trying to find the scientific evidence that we need airplanes at all. From the Cambrian explosion up until 1910 there was no such thing as a plane and we managed to get by just fine. Now everybody's all like ' I need my Mexican resort vacation, how can I do it with my precious airplanes?'. I'll need to see some evidence for that.
- gameswithgo 9y agooh, I can assure you there are a great many of us who don't find this lack of evidence surprising!
- txsh 9y agoSurprising? Just to the hacks at Vox.
- sctb 9y agoWould you please start commenting substantively, like the guidelines ask? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- gwbas1c 9y agoIf 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?
- bucketsjimbo 9y agoWhile 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
- godzillabrennus 9y agoI am not a dog person but I know plenty of people who feel the same way. We should be doing more to support emotional support animals in general to help those afflicted. Mental health is something we as a society in America should be trying a lot of things to improve. More dogs (especially French Bulldogs doing cute/funny things) is a good step forward.
- bentruyman 9y ago> We should be doing more to support emotional support animals in general to help those afflicted. Did either you or the parent commenter read the entire article or the interview at the end? Nobody is saying support animals don't help in any way. The whole discussion is about the lack of any serious studies or evidence that animals objectively help those with mental health issues, and how exactly they help. How can you say "we should be doing more to support" something without knowing if that thing is actually helping? This is the point of the article.
- bucketsjimbo 9y agoIt paints it in a very negative light. Does not mention a single positive anecdote Only says we don't know so they could be doing harm!
- AcerbicZero 9y agoThey 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.
- markbnj 9y agoDo 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 9y agoMy 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 9y agoIf 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 9y agoNo, 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.
- gerbilly 9y agoWho 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 9y ago> 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 9y agoIf 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.
- tinymollusk 9y agoI agree on an individual level. In order to develop policies, however, it's important to base decisions on the truth. (Not that this always happens)
- leohutson 9y agoPolicies should take also into account individual preferences and freedom. Individual freedoms should only be taken away if there is evidence good evidence that they are causing significant harm to others at a group level or individual level. Mild inconvenience to others is not a significant enough problem to take away emotional support animals, because owners clearly value them highly.
- tw1010 9y agoTo 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 9y agoThe article and the person interviewed did not "dismiss something because there is a lack of scientific research about it."
- tw1010 9y agoYou 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.
- ikeyany 9y ago"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 9y agoNot enough animals? We used to be around animals all the time.
- thinkloop 9y agoThe 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.
- wavefunction 9y agoYou can drive or perhaps take a train. Traveling internationally or trans-continentally with a pet will subject them to lengthy quarantine as well. I suppose a private flight is an option for some folks.
- thinkloop 9y agoQuarantine is rare especially between western countries.
- Beamer92 9y agoThis 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.
- xivzgrev 9y agoThere 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 9y agoThere'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)