There is no list of qualifying conditions and no quiz that settles it. What exists instead is a professional's considered view on two points: the limit your condition places on ordinary functioning, and the animal's contribution to it. Here is how that judgement is reached.
There is no list of qualifying conditions and no quiz that settles it, which is why the question is so hard to answer online. In its place sits a professional's view on how far your functioning is limited, and what the animal contributes.
People arrive expecting to find a table of conditions with ticks beside them. No agency publishes one, and no clinician works from one. The legal framework asks a broader question: does a condition substantially limit a major life activity, and does the animal help with the limitation.
That sounds vaguer than a list, and in one sense it is. But it is also fairer, because it assesses your circumstances instead of your label. Two people with identical diagnoses can reasonably get different answers, and both assessments can be correct.
A few minutes online, no payment attached. Its purpose is to signal whether somebody in your position should go on to be assessed. It does not decide anything, and it cannot.
You talk with a state-licensed clinician about what has become harder and what the animal contributes. This is where the judgement is made - the step certificate sellers skip entirely.
Three ways it can land: yes, no, or a query back for more detail. A service that never declines is not evaluating anybody, and its letters get treated accordingly by landlords.
Where approved, you send the letter to your housing provider with a written request. That is a separate decision made by them, under different rules.
What has become harder, and how consistently. Not how dramatic the diagnosis sounds.
Which things measurably alter in the animal's company. Concrete beats hypothetical every time.
Whether the clinician could defend this recommendation afterwards.
Whether keeping the animal is reasonable where you live, and what you are actually asking for.
The first is treating a diagnosis as a ticket. Someone reads that anxiety "counts", assumes the label settles it, and is thrown when the clinician wants to talk about their week instead. The label opens the conversation; the functional impact carries it.
The second is believing a severe presentation is required. It is not. Plenty of people function well in most respects and struggle badly in one that matters, and that narrow limitation is assessable on its own terms.
The third is the reverse, and the costliest: deciding in advance that you are not unwell enough to ask. That is a clinical judgement, and making it about yourself before anyone has looked is how people talk themselves out of an assessment they would have passed.
It covers three areas and nothing else. Your circumstances, so it can tell whether an evaluation is the right next step. Your housing, because a request to a landlord follows different rules from one to an airline and the answers diverge early. And the animal, since whether you already live with it changes what a clinician can usefully assess.
What it deliberately avoids is anything resembling a diagnosis. No screening tool run through a browser can make one, and any site that tells you otherwise before a clinician has spoken to you has already told you what its letters are worth.
It happens, and it should. A clinician who cannot decline is not exercising judgement, and a letter produced by such a process is worth exactly what a landlord decides it is worth - which, increasingly, is nothing.
A no is also not necessarily permanent. Circumstances change, and so do the reasons behind them. What a decline does tell you is that you were assessed by somebody willing to put their licence behind the answer, which is the only kind of assessment worth having.
Before you start
No quiz decides it, ours included. A screening narrows things down and tells you whether booking an evaluation is sensible, but a person holding a licence makes the actual determination.
There is no official list, which surprises people. The test turns on substantial limitation of a major life activity, and that is weighed case by case rather than checked against a table.
A few minutes. It asks about your situation, your housing and the animal. Nothing is charged at that stage and you are not committed to anything by completing it.
You are told whether a clinical evaluation looks appropriate. Where it does, the decision to go on is yours, and payment enters the picture at that point and not before.
A clinician can decline to issue a letter, yes - that possibility is what makes the assessment meaningful. Our refund position is set out on the pricing page so you know it before you decide.
No. Many people are assessed without any existing treatment relationship. Having one can add useful context, but it is not a prerequisite for being evaluated.
Not for an emotional support animal - its role is presence rather than trained work. Where a trained task is the requirement, what you want is a psychiatric service dog, and that route runs differently.
Not necessarily. Cats are common, and other household animals are assessed on the facts. What matters is the animal's role for you and whether keeping it is reasonable in your housing.
The building's policy does not decide your eligibility - a clinician does. Whether the landlord then grants the accommodation is a separate question with its own rules.
A guardian is involved and the process differs slightly. Start the screening with the guardian present and the intake will route it correctly.
It takes in your circumstances and reports back on whether seeing a clinician is the sensible next move. No payment, no commitment.
