Framing everything in terms of mental health is one of those things were I can't tell if people are participating in some kind of mass social joke, or are serious.
Framing everything in terms of mental health is one of those things were I can't tell if people are participating in some kind of mass social joke, or are serious.
I think it is a little of both :) Emotional support animals are a real thing, but they are expensive and require a lot of maintenance and there are limits on where they may be taken. Stuffed animals can make people feel better for similar reasons, it's a companion to "talk to" or a nice familiar sight, and they have a lot lower bar to ownership than real animals do. So a stuffed animal can be reasonably considered to be in the same category as a real emotional support animal, but they are obviously a lot less serious than a real animal. So it's fun and funny to choose an animal with a bit of silliness and humor to it, like a chicken.
It is a joke, yeah, but it can also be a mood booster. So it's both.
Speaking of the benefits of someone to "talk to", programmers have long known the benefits of rubber duck debugging, in speaking aloud the problem (to an inanimate object) to help align their thinking.
Perhaps we all could benefit from some knitted Coding Support Chickens?
It's a meme, alright. It's simple and very funny, obvious enough that everyone "gets it" when they hear it. However, I don't believe anyone actually does that? I mean, why would you need a rubber duck to talk to, in particular one rocking back and forth to nod its head with agreement? Can't you just talk with yourself?
But that's exactly how it works! You talk to it and walk yourself through your problem to hopefully arrive at a solution.
If you can do it without a duck/rock/colleague/whatever, that's great! But for some, it is easier if they have someone to talk to.
There are also obviously some people that take advantage of the rules around emotional support animals. Like Great Danes on airplanes (second hand anecdote). So the effect is that people tend to suspect everyone is taking advantage. There are even a ton of services to make it super easy to classify a pet as an emotional support animal. So, I am all for these ridiculous chickens. Might buy some for my kids (I am not into knitting).
As far as I know, no major airlines have any special treatment for "emotional support animals." Most U.S. airlines allow pets on domestic flights to fly if they stay inside carriers within approved size limits. Emotional support animals and therapy animals fly as pets regardless of any certifications. So I'm pretty sure there's no service that makes it easy to fly with your Great Dane as an emotional support animal. You might be thinking of other animal-related exceptions, like having a pet in your apartment where the lease normally doesn't allow pets.
Service dogs on commercial flights are a separate USDOT category. The dog needs to be trained for a specific task for a disabled passenger, and the passenger must provide an attestation form. Airlines must allow service dogs, but they can still deny transport if the dog poses a safety risk or causes significant disruption before or after boarding. I'm not sure how enforcement works in practice, but I certainly wouldn't try to fly with a dog using a false attestation.
My understanding that those services that classify your animal are all unnecessary and sort of a scam.
Clearly not a pet person.
I am a total fan of emotional support chickens, real or knitted. I am also a fan of rotisserie chickens.
Yup. A pretty clear giveaway that a service animal is fake is those vests with “SERVICE ANIMAL” in size 9000 font on the side.
We are in a time where it's fashionable to have mental health issues. It's very strange.
> We are in a time where it's fashionable to have mental health issues. It's very strange
I'd argue it isn't. The first edition of the DSM was published in 1952 [1]. This is right after "the routine annual comprehensive physical examination (PE) became a fixture in American medical practice" [2].
Add 25 years for a generation to be educated, another 25 for the old guard to retire, and you'd expect the paradigm shift around mental health to land around the millenium. Unless you have evidence we had a nonlinear jump between then and now, I'd argue the trend is analagous to folks becoming aware of and culturally assimilating the concept of blood type.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Man...
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK82767/
Something can be causal or even predictable but still strange and difficult to reconcile.
I do think that there is a component of fashion or social currency that has piggybacked on medical awareness, or perhaps as a byproduct of its mixing with moral credentialism of disadvantage.
Fashionable? I disagree. Acceptable? Hopefully.
People have been stigmatized and isolated for generations for being “different” in some way. Emotional and psychological reasons included. People are all different. We all have different issues. We all have different experiences. No one should be shunned for seeking out others with similarities to get advice and support. And how can you do that without making people aware?
Do we have more mental health issues than in the past? I don’t think so. I think we’re more aware and more accepting than past generations.
I've seen this plenty of times, young people almost boasting about their diagnosis like the old upper class used to be proud of gout
Some health care professionals are becoming hesitant to talk about diagnoses because it hurts the patient when they start identifying with the diagnosis it makes the condition worse when the patient starts to act more like the diagnosed condition because that's how they're supposed to act
Whether I’m still young depends on your definition of that word, but I’m proud of my autism diagnosis, because it gave me the vocabulary to explain what I had always felt and the ability to find tools to improve my life.
I used to be dismissed as lazy, and I simply had to live with my apparent moral failure. Man, I tried so much self-improvement advice, and none of it worked.
Now I know that this is not the case, that there’s nothing wrong with me, and I found a huge community of like-minded people. Turns out there are quite a lot of self-improvement tools for autistic people, and they actually work.
(I believe many ADHDers feel the same way about their diagnosis.)
Very interesting!
I am likely to have ADHD. Was never diagnosed as a youth because I never allowed it. Seriously! Growing up during the late 70's and 80's was a weird time for these things.
My mistrust in all of that came from watching friends get diagnosed then medicated. Then most of those people kind of shut down. Some presented very differently, generally not in a good way, as far as I was concerned.
A few personas I loved just got medicated away.
So... nope. Not gonna happen. I threw up a barrier that took well into maybe my late 30's to come down.
I had decided very young that I was in charge of who I was, nobody else and was fairly aware of all that during formative years. My trust was literally zero on that front, unless knowing someone would, in my eyes, be good for me.
From there, I identified with who I thought were pretty great people and the rest got the Okie Dokie, next treatment.
These days seem different for sure.
I knew damn well I was not neurotypical, a word that did not appear for many years ahead of my own struggles, and frankly that had to be OK, because I needed to be OK to exist as me. Who were others to say otherwise?
Today, seems like we live in a more permissive society than we did before. I do know my own perception is keen for having managed my own struggles. I can reach others and help. No meds needed, just real trust and the right experiences.
Sometimes meds are needed too. I feel they are used in lazy ways too often. Other means should be first.
And my beef with the meds boils down to how effective the right experiences can be.
Kid has anger management issues?
Medicate!
Or.. maybe put then into a wrestling club and see them mello right out and become a great, fairly tolerant person.
Both can work well, and both can go badly too.
It mostly boils down to how the humans in charge of debugging and empowering the young humans handle problems and the tools they use.
IMHO people reached for the meds far too often back then.
Maybe we are now too permissive, not doing enough to tease out the best in people, coping instead.
What I like most in your take is you are self aware and have others like you to build on.
I did not. Or, I did, but finding them and experiencing what you are was a lot harder, due to how less connected everyone was back then.
What I did was seek good mentors. Found them and came up OK, and capable. You appear to be getting after the same thing.
Good!
It all starts with self acceptance and awareness. From there, many who achieve those things can build on that and live a fine life.
I bet you do. Thanks for sharing a little perspective. It is high value.
There was an opinion piece in The Guardian a few years ago expounding the idea that 'awareness' and particularly the medicalisation of minor cases of things like anxiety and depression may be counterproductive, may lead more people to sink into these conditions rather than battle through and pull themselves out of them - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/24/medica...
And it's interesting to me that we now have the UK government talking about providing mental health support to try to foster grit and self-reliance - https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/may/16/much-needed-...
Only certain mental health issues. Being a full on schizophrenic newspaper hoarder won’t ever be in style.
Yesterday newspaper hoarder was just replaced with 90's videogames, mangas or hifi / computer manuals.
Not physically, but digital hoarding is in full swing.
That's what I fell about the 21 pilots track I'm so stressed out.
isn't it mostly about childhood nostalgia? "I'm more stressed then when I was a kid" seems pretty basic
I'm more stressed out than like... during Summer, when I was a kid.
I've never, ever been as stressed out as during school, grades 7-12. If the rest of life had been that stressful or worse, I'd have checked out a long time ago.
Yeah I remember a constant trend in my child->young adult years was hearing "oh you think it's hard now? wait until you get to "next thing"'.
Every single time without fail (except maybe the jump from kindergarten to school) what actually happened was that the adults around me breathed down my neck a little bit less and I got access to a little more freedom to do fun stuff.
Being a kid in school is horrible. You're entirely reliant on your parents to buy you everything and enable you to experience things, nobody trusts you, everything is full of arbitrary rules.
The jump from school to university was especially stark - I kept being told it was going to be really hard, I'd need to work way harder than in highschool etc etc. Turns out what actually happened was I went from 6 straight hours of unavoidable class a day to maybe 2 or 3 much more interesting ones that were recorded and posted online and could be skipped when needed with no consequence, roughly the same amount of homework and I got to live with people my age 5 minutes walk from a 24 hour McDonalds.
And working... they pay you quite a lot of money to be there (seriously even a minimum wage job is unfathomable to a kid, do you know how many gameboys you could buy with that?), there's no homework and you get to do something you're really good at.
Maybe I just had an easy time but 7-12 was a lot less stressful than office work and arbitrary meetings all day. I probably just miss the predictable schedule
Huh, I'd liken school in those grades to a series of meetings basically all day, that are mostly presentations, every day of the week, with a lot of restrictions and harsh conduct & expectations from the people leading the meetings, which'd never fly in an office. Often with terrible lighting and long stretches without seeing the outdoors, even though a window. And crazy-early start times that may have you not seeing the sun until 3PM or so, for months. And, especially toward the end, a couple more hours of work at home every day. Mostly of math problems.
Also, all that, plus you're not getting paid for it.
If that were a job, I was characterize it as a boring job, not a stressful one.
I'm sure experiences differ, but mine was that school was trivially easy and inconsequential, but sometimes time intensive.
I wouldn't consider a job where I have to go and listen to a boring presentation for 8 hours a day stressful. What is stressful is the rat race and making sure I can afford mortgage payments
OTOH, if you fail out of class, most of us wouldn't have become homeless, just placed in a remedial class. Whereas getting fired from your office job would land you out on the street if you're living paycheck to paycheck.
Only if you live somewhere without unemployment insurance (or you mis-manage your money).
I'm having hard time relating; my experience is literally the opposite of yours. Grade 7-12 (if I parse that correctly; I mean 12-17yo) were literally the best part of my life. School was boring AF, but had its moments; it gave me some interesting people to talk with every day, and then I had plenty of time to pursue my interests. Stress? What stress?
Before that period? I don't remember much. After that period? Everything gets downhill. Being an adult in a society sucks and I hate it. Normal people lifestyle, with its routines and "work/life balance", with everyone around you having expectations around random customs, with having to do everything in tiny bite-sized chunks, because there's not enough time left after work, chores and family - that's just not compatible with my mind.
Yeah, I guess, this could be a mental health issue.
There was another discussion @hn a few days ago where this was explained. When you're young, your life is pretty much on rails and you are very sure what the next step is (ie. kindergarten - > school -> high school -> uni). But when you finally finish your education, the tracks end there and now you have to figure out where to go from here and that can be mentally draining.
My school had a lot of field trips. I have never been part of a job that included trips to "the little farm. "I asked a friend from Hong Kong, if he had trips to A little farm, and he said he did.
I think this is supposed to be team building exercises, but I've never heard of a farm for one. Could be good!
It's fashionable to use the language of mental health to talk about how you feel, but that's not quite the same thing.
I'm curious what you think counts as "framing in terms of mental health." Or more interestingly, if you think this article constitutes "framing in terms of mental health," I'm curious what you wouldn't consider as such.
This article does use words related to mental states, like "comforting" and "relaxing." But that's pretty difficult to avoid in most writing of non-trivial length.
The name they've decided to give these, "emergency" chickens, knitting them for hurricane survivors. It's all a step up from just "we like these and they're nice" and into "these are Helpful with a capital H".
My point is exactly that that kind of thing reads like a joking exaggeration, but this sort of approach to things is really common now and I truly have trouble telling when people are joking or being serious about it. Most of it reads like joking to me, but I don't know. It's also been going on long enough that it's making me wonder even more, since, judged as a joke, it was played out and over-done years ago.
I think you're pretty clearly experiencing a false positive on your "major cultural problem" detector. The chickens are cute and comforting, no doubt, and people are referring to them as "emotional support chickens" and "emergency chickens" as a tongue-in-cheek hyperbole. Note how the chickens are given names like "Hennifer Lopez" and "Lindsey LoHEN." You even say that it reads like a joking exaggeration, but apparently your confirmation bias is strong enough to override that observation?
There's lots of research showing stuffed animals can reduce stress even in adults. There is no joke here.
You're weirdly concerned about how much I'm reacting, which is pretty minimally. Like, I can't imagine how I could have raised this while reacting any less. But yes, I also saw your other post and got your message that you're bothered I brought this up at all. [EDIT] Ah, ninja-edited this paragraph into irrelevance! :-)
Maybe you need a chicken. [EDIT] But perhaps we all need chickens?
But thank you for helping me understand this. The framing is 100% serious, I guess.
I would say that it is 99% joke, but the 1% is important in validating, justifying, and elevating the concept in the current culture.
I would say the topic framed in terms of mental health. For one, the chicken itself is called an "emotional support chicken" - this itself is indicative of cultural currency. The idea and purpose of a knit chicken can be framed in many ways. It can be simply fun, creative, or artistic. In this case the purpose is psychologically palliative opposed to recreational. It is medicalized. You see this elsewhere. A day off work to rest, relax, and enjoy isn't just vacation (which also implies these concepts), but a mental health day.
One of the leading stories in the article is about delivering them to survivors of Hurricane Helene - an interesting linguistic choice in its own right (Helene impacted roughly 2 million people, killing about 200. It had a 99.995% survival rate).
I suspect most people make these chickens simply for fun and decoration.
Your comment is seething with confirmation bias. You're seeing things only because you're looking for them.
You conflate "health" with the word "palliative," when the latter specifically refers specifically to serious health problems. I go to the gym for my physical health and my mental health, but that doesn't imply that skipping one gym session would lead to a serious physical or mental health problem. Same goes for "mental health days." There's nothing sensational about referring to one's health.
And yes, we always refer to people who survive natural disasters as "survivors." Google "survivors of hurricane helene" and you'll find countless articles with headlines like "Survivors Describe Their Frightening Experiences," "4 Ways to Help Hurricane Helene Survivors," "Federal Assistance for Hurricane Helene Survivors Surpasses $137 Million," etc.
>And yes, we always refer to people who survive natural disasters as "survivors." Google "survivors of hurricane helene" and you'll find countless articles with headlines like "Survivors Describe Their Frightening Experiences," "4 Ways to Help Hurricane Helene Survivors," "Federal Assistance for Hurricane Helene Survivors Surpasses $137 Million," etc.
Yes, I agree, which is why I used it as an example. You are confirming that the observation is not bias! Im not claiming that the article is exceptional in this regard.
I think it is precisely the framing and focus on health and safety which is interesting!
You claimed that it's an "interesting linguistic choice" in the context of an alleged "cultural currency" which overly frames topics in terms of mental health, describes the purpose of comforting toys as "psychologically palliative" and "medicalized." You claimed that this phenomenon is everywhere, then gave two more alleged examples: the term "mental health day" and the term "survivor."
I disagree with all of it. Using the term "survivor" in its most basic and widespread sense is not at all interesting in the context of your false argument about "cultural currency."
Thats OK, I'm fine to disagree.
You've hit the nail on the head, and it points to what's actually driving it.
> It is medicalized... A day off work to rest, relax, and enjoy isn't just vacation (which also implies these concepts), but a mental health day.
The destruction of individual agency, in favor of top-down systems of control. The culture is a self-reinforcing thing, but what's pushing the culture is individuals having to express their own needs in terms of what the system will allow them. The "day off" isn't allowed - paid ones are not required to be provided by law, and the wealth-centralizing economic treadmill has made it so most people do not have the finances to lose a day of pay.
Similarly with emotional support animals. Airlines have policies that certain types of pets need to travel in the cold cargo hold, getting left waiting on a hot tarmac, with horror stories abounding. Landlords outright prohibit pets or put you over the barrel for "pet rent" (it's not like paying pet rent gets you extra space or amenities, or makes it so that chewing on the woodwork then becomes "normal wear and tear".
So enter people skirting their systems by any means possible, in this case the federal laws that created the legal concept of emotional support animals. And then comes the crab bucket mentality of rolling our eyes at people who we deem to be inappropriately using the escape hatch.
To avoid the euphemism/abstraction treadmill, we would need to be having these conversations maturely. But politics always seems to just end up going sideways (/me loosely gestures at the current ongoing destructionist catastrophe)
My thoughts went down a similar track as well. It is about justification. As collectivist attitudes increase socially, individuals feel the need to frame or justify and defend their individual actions and desires. Its not just that I want a vacation day and have leverage to take it (socially unacceptable), but I need it - it is necessary maintenance, but ultimately for the greater good. Like you said, it is a play on values that are socially acceptable to express to get what people want anyways.
As a result a recreational hobby gets dressed up as self care or pro-social action. There can be an element of truth to this of course, but I do think it introduces a lot of exaggeration and conflation.
Putting my biases on the table, the whole thing strikes me as childish and dishonest. Kind of of like a kid rationalizing to a parent how they will use some new toy to get their homework done faster.
You hit the nail on the head, IMO.
> Individuals feel the need to frame or justify and defend their individual actions and desires.
This, exactly this. I only recently realized this has been a huge factor for almost my entire life. There was always something more important to do than what I wanted. Parents wanted me to do things. School wanted me to do things. Religion wanted me to do things (courtesy of growing up in a proselytising Christianity-adjacent cult, 1/10 would not recommend). Later, in adulthood, it's family expectations again, then relationships, and then of course, work. The sum total of things I'm supposed to be doing, and that reflect good on me when I'm seen busy doing them, is effectively unbounded, leaving no place for any "selfish desire" such as... IDK, relaxing, taking a walk, clearing my head, watching stupid shit on the Internet.
Of course, those desires don't go away just because there's always something more important to do. But I can't just satisfy them without feeling like having to justify to myself and others, why I'm doing the "me thing" instead of the "important thing". Might be why I've struggled with procrastination all my adulthood - "I'm working" gets others off my back, and then it's only me I have to justify my choices to.
(As a kid, I didn't do "new toy to get my homework done faster", but I sure did the other thing - a computer to help me learn. It was a great argument, because it was partially true and my parents also heard it from adult sources (e.g. news programs).)
I'm not really sure why I do it, and why many others seem to. Some kind of insecurity? Like, I want to escape the neverending demands of other people without hurting my relationships with them, so I justify it in a way that makes fulfilling my own needs sound like either a) a critical, unavoidable maintenance work, something that's not really a choice, or b) it's actually doing them a favor, or c) it's capital-I Important. It's preemptively denying others the ability to counter "hey, what about me and my needs". A form of conflict avoidance, I guess.
I envy people who can just take vacations, or do hobbies, or whatever, without guilt or the need to justify it to others.
What's insightful about parent's comment is that it not only question the need for the new toy but also the need to do the homework faster.
In this case for me its is it really an emotional support chicken? Or it is just a cuddly chicken that people like and find enjoyment from.
Not everything that brings people joy is an emotional support xxx.
Similar to saying you have OCD because you double checked if you switched your iron off. It's not obsessive compulsive you just double checked something.
I suspect they are all in support of the soon to be 28th amendment "The right to bear, breed, harvest, and sell chickens shall not be infringed."
You are overreacting. There's nothing about mental health in there. They are called Emotional Support Chicken because they are comforting. Calm down.