In the last week, I have overheard a couple different conversations from other college students talking about how to have a cat in on-campus housing. The "easy" answer I've heard a few too many people joke about is to claim you need it for an emotional health issue like anxiety or depression, thus having it registered as an emotional support animal. There are a few reasons why these conversations bother me.
The first and most important is that there are those with an actual need for constant animal companionship. Now, I’m not getting all high and mighty to be condescending - I’m not one of those who needs an animal. In fact, the only reason I know that I don’t need one is because I wanted a “stress cat” too. Last year, when I started college and found myself with pretty bad anxiety, I looked into acquiring a cat as an ESA. Like the people I’ve overheard talking about it, I had heard that getting a cat for depression or anxiety is supposed to be easy. The thing is, you do have to show a need for it. And as I was told by an on-campus therapist, those with these type of service animals have them because they basically need them to function, or at least to feel like they can function. As bad as I felt, as much as some days felt like I was barely muddling through my classes and learning to be an adult, I was functioning alright on my own. In my opinion, if you’re still managing your life - taking care of your basic needs, doing okay in school, working to make some social connections or keep up those you have - you probably don’t have a true need for an emotional support animal.* Be thankful for that and keep doing the other things you need to do for your emotional or mental health.
The second reason it bothers me is the idea that it's easy to acquire an ESA. If you look at the National Service Animal Registry site, yes there are only three steps to register your chosen animal as an ESA, but the process of getting one includes a medical prescription, proving the need I was just talking about.
“For a person to legally qualify for an emotional support animal (ESA), he/she must be considered emotionally disabled by a licensed mental health professional (therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, etc.), as evidenced by a properly formatted prescription letter.
The letter should state that:
- You are currently his/her patient
- Are under his/her care for the treatment of mental disability found in the DSM IV or V (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, version 4 or 5).
- Your disability substantially limits at least one major life activity
- He/she prescribes for you an emotional support animal as a necessary treatment for your mental health.”
If you have the need for an ESA, I would think that should be easy for your mental health care provider to discern. If you’re seriously committed to getting a support animal on campus and willing to fudge your need for one, then I guess this prescription process could be considered easy too. But again, in my opinion, this isn’t something to take lightly. If you don't seriously require support from an animal to function daily, it’s gotta be time-consuming at the least, if not pretty difficult at the most, to convince a therapist that you do. It’s their job to do what’s best for your health, and I don’t see any good reasons to stretch the truth to them.
Third, do you really want a cat or other support animal? I mean, like really, truly want to clean up after them (picking up their waste on walks, cleaning litter boxes etc.) and tend to their needs? I mean we’re in college - this is probably one of the only, if not the only, time in our lives when we’re accountable for just ourselves. The majority of us don’t have spouses or kids, nor do we have to stick close to our families. We’re free to do virtually whatever we want. Animals require care. If you have a prescribed ESA, then it’s obviously worth the care to you. But for most college kids, there are lots of logical reasons fish are the only allowed pets in dorms.
The bottom line is that having an emotional support animal is a serious thing, and not one you should joke about or pursue if you know that you don't truly have an emotional disability.
*I’m not a mental health professional and I can’t tell you if you need an ESA or not. I can say from experience that if you think you may need one, pursue it and see what a mental health professional has to say. But “because having a cat in my dorm would be awesome” shouldn’t be your main or only motivation.
