Everything You Need to Know About Emotional Support Animals and ESA Letters

Over the years, there have been various opinions about emotional support animals and the role they play. There are different misconceptions regarding what these ESA’s actually do. Never before this, anybody has ever realized that animals can actually heal a variety of mental and psychological disorders. But, with the help of the emotional support animals, this actually happens. 

Emotional support animals act as a companion to the emotionally or mentally disturbed individuals and bring therapeutic benefits like mitigating or alleviating some symptoms of a disability to a person with a psychiatric or mental issue. An ESA can be any animal such dogs, cats, and other domestic animals like hamsters, hedgehogs, goats, rats, birds, and teacup pigs.

Pet therapy builds on the pre-existing human-animal bond. Interacting with a friendly pet can help cure many physical and mental issues. It can help minimize blood pressure and improve overall cardiovascular health. It can also release endorphins that produce a calming effect. Often seen, people in the older ages enjoy a better physical health and mental well-being when accompanied with pets. The reason for this is the calming effect created by the human-animal bond. 

Consistently, studies have been conducted to get an insight on the varied benefits of pet companionship with individuals suffering from certain kind of mental or psychological illness. According to all those studies, it is found that pet companionship has varied kinds of positive impact on the mental and emotional condition of the people. Pets or companion animals can often increase socialization activities and decrease blood pressure, cholesterol and cortisol levels, and loneliness. Other than this, they also help alleviate psychological disorders like depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc. 

Owing to the above explanation, it should have been become understandable now that how emotional animals impact human health and mind and what role they play in the lives of the psychologically or emotionally unstable individuals. 

In today’s economy, no one is really healthy. There is something or the other that is creating emotional and psychological disabilities within people. There is no hierarchy for psychological or emotional disorders. There are few category of people, who are facing extreme psychological problem of stress and anxiety while there are other set of people, who are experiencing acute depression and loneliness issues. In both the conditions, the psychologists believe that an emotional support animal can really help alleviate these symptoms and can help the individual live a healthy life.

In the US, there are some clinical organizations like ours that offer psychological consultation to individuals suffering from some or the other kind of psychological issue. The psychologists here mostly recommend therapeutic healing of the emotional or psychological disorder and so advise the assistance of emotional support animals. Emotional support animals can heal a variety of psychological and emotional issues which includes cognitive decline, autism, bipolar disorder, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder, social phobia, aviophobia, depression, and many more.

In order to enjoy the therapeutic benefits offered by ESA’s, you need your emotional support animal to be with you round the clock. For this reason, ESA letters are provided by the psychologists for problem-free housing and travel.

You might know that there are strict restrictions for animal travel and housing. Considering those restrictions, the psychologist seeks to provide ESA letters to individuals with emotional and psychological disabilities. You might be wondering what these ESA letters are. Well, ESA letters are medical documents that state the details about the psychological condition of the individual seeking an emotional support animal and elaborate the role for which the ESA is provided to him for assistance.

This is a prerequisite for individuals with disabilities. With an ESA letter, people cannot travel and live with their ESA’s. The reason for this restriction is that under the federal law, the ESA’s are categorized different from other animals or pets. There is a special category allotted to them. This is why, having an ESA letter for housing and travel is mandatory to be with your emotional support animal all the time. The ESA letter acts as the only source of identity for the emotional support animal.

If your psychologist recommends you an emotional support animal, don’t forget to seek for an ESA letter right away. Without an ESA letter, your emotional support animal will not be able to get identified among other pets and will also not able to enjoy the special benefits allotted to only these special set of animals. 

We at Psychological Disability Service Center aim to provide psychological consultation assistance to individuals with emotional or psychological problems and help them heal this condition through therapeutic methods. If you think you need any such consultation, contact us immediately.  
For more information or better insight about our services, visit www.pdscenter.com