Animals can provide people with comfort, joy, and love. Their loving personalities, excited tail wags, and loud purrs can help people who might need a little pick-up in their day. These emotional support animals, or ESAs, can range from a dog to a lizard. Emotional support animals are beneficial for their owners as they can give someone a loving friend, help reduce anxiety, and allow people to socialize more.
Animals are great companions, whether it’s for a friend around the house or an emotional support animal. Animals are a huge part of people’s lives, with 86.9 million homes owning a pet in the United States, as of 2024. Across the United States, dogs and cats are loved by millions of families. There are hundreds of different animals that people take in with loving arms, including leopard geckos, snakes, chinchillas, and more. BrainsWay, a global medical technology company, stated in their article ‘Mental Health Benefits of Emotional Support Animals,’ that an ESA can be anything as “long as their presence helps relieve or lessen an individual’s psychiatric symptoms.” So while many animals don’t come to mind when the phrase ‘emotional support animal’ comes up, any animal can be prescribed as one.
There are a lot of perks to having an emotional support animal. One of these perks is that they can help reduce anxiety. There have been studies done on the benefits pets have to our mental health, including decreasing blood pressure, improving moods, and lowering cholesterol. When someone pets an animal, it can “trigger a natural response in the body. It lowers blood pressure and reduces stress levels,” Cerebral, an online mental health program, wrote. These ESAs, or pets in general, can help people calm down in times of anxiety attacks or situations that cause distress. It’s important for people with disorders like anxiety to find a way to manage their symptoms. Emotional support animals can be the help someone needs in their everyday life.
When owning a pet, especially a dog, most owners take them on walks. These walks give people the chance to interact with others with the comfort of their animal by their side. Emotional support animals can provide opportunities to socialize with other people. “Talking to other pet owners and taking a dog for walks can reduce feelings of isolation,” Jo Nash, owner of Focused Flow Coaching and has a Ph.D in psychotherapy studies, wrote in her article How Emotional Support Animals Promote Mental Health. Dogs, for instance, can be brought to dog parks for a chance to release pent-up energy. These dog parks allow dogs to socialize with each other and their owners to socialize with people who have common interests. A conversation can spark a friendship, linked by the companionship of a dog or any other pet.
Some people might argue that emotional support animals aren’t as important as service animals because they aren’t trained, but ESAs can be prescribed by doctors to help people with anxiety or any other disorder. Service animals provide a different aid for many people, whether that is detecting a food allergy or helping people with limited eyesight get around. ESAs can help reduce anxiety that their owners may feel and calm their nerves. People with emotional support animals know they can rest easy with a companion by their side.
Emotional support animals provide many benefits for people who need a friend, have anxiety or any other psychological disorder, and can give people a chance to socialize with others. We must recognize that people around the world struggle with disorders like anxiety, and one way to help them cope is to have an emotional support animal. ESAs are just as important, and while they don’t go through specialized training like service animals, they can help others who might need a paw to hold.
