No more emotional support animals on planes?

In recent years, airline passengers have brought aboard not just the more common dogs and cats but also miniature ponies, hedgehogs, even a peacock they claimed they needed for emotional support during flights. Now a proposed U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) regulation may revoke that privilege — a move that psychologists say will help stop abuse of the system by passengers who just want to bring their pets along for free.

Under the proposed rule, passengers with physical or psychological disabilities would still be able to bring service animals — dogs only — on board airplanes as long as they can certify that the canines have been trained to perform tasks to help them manage their disabilities. (Individual airlines could decide to allow other species of animals that help people with disabilities into the cabin but would only be required to recognize dogs as service animals under federal law.) Owners would also have to attest to the animal’s health, good behavior and ability to relieve itself in a sanitary manner or hold on until the plane has landed.

So-called emotional support animals would still be able to fly, just under the same rules as other pets. That means paying a fee to transport the animal, whether in the cabin or in the hold. Airlines also typically limit in-cabin travel to small animals that can fit in a pet carrier able to slide under the seat in front of a passenger and stay there for the duration of the flight.

The current system is rife with abuse, says Connie Galietti, JD, director of legal and professional affairs at APA. “It has become, ‘Oh, I’m sad and my pet iguana will help me feel better,’” says Galietti. What’s needed, she says, are regulations that protect the needs of people with disabilities and protect the public from the risk of potentially dangerous, poorly trained animals.

Although APA is still preparing its comments, the proposed regulation incorporates almost all of the recommendations that APA made when the DOT first announced its intention to change the rules two years ago. One key suggestion the DOT picked up? Clarifying the distinction between emotional support animals and service animals as a way of reining in abuses, which the proposed regulations do, says Sangeeta Panicker, PhD, director of research ethics at APA.

“Service animals, whether for psychiatric or physical disabilities, are trained to help a particular individual in particular tasks,” Panicker explains, noting that service animals are defined under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Examples include animals that can detect signs of and intervene with an impending panic attack or animals that can remind someone to take psychiatric medications, as well seeing eye dogs and dogs trained to sniff out low blood sugar in individuals with diabetes.

In contrast, says Panicker, emotional support animals supposedly provide comfort via their presence alone. But, she points out, “there’s very little if any scientific evidence to support the claim that emotional support animals actually help individuals.” And treating service animals for individuals with psychiatric disabilities differently than those for individuals with physical disabilities adds to the stigma around mental illness, she says.

Jeffrey Younggren, PhD, a leading researcher on emotional support animals who calls the trend “a good idea run amok,” applauds the proposed regulations.

“The small population of people who need emotional support animals because they have serious mental health disabilities is the population that should be addressed by this, not everyone who wants to take their dog along with them on an airplane,” says Younggren, a clinical professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of New Mexico’s School of Medicine.

The law as written was designed to require a formal mental health diagnosis, which most of these individuals don’t have, says Younggren. Well-intentioned mental health practitioners have given mental health diagnoses to individuals who just want to fly or live with their animals, without understanding the potential consequences for both themselves and their patients. Practitioners who agree to write letters for their patients attesting to their need for emotional support animals risk role conflicts by mixing clinical and forensic tasks, he points out.

And patients themselves may not realize that having a formal diagnosis of a disability — and the impairment such a diagnosis implies — could limit their career options, among other issues.

“You’re never going to get into a service academy, and you’ll have difficulties getting into law enforcement careers,” Younggren says. “They’re going to ask you if you have a history of mental health disorders.”

To make your own opinion heard, comment on the proposed regulationopens in new window. The deadline for comments is April 6, 2020.