To clarify: I'm not talking about if pets in general can give emotional support to their owners, of course they can.
I mean should the concept of Emotional Support Animals get treated with the same level of respect and seriousness as that of regular Service Animals for the physically disabled.
This sounds like a problem with a relatively obvious solution, which is to find a way to train specialized ESA pets.
Some countries do, of course that makes it very difficult to get one (the vast vast majority of support animals wash out of training for reasons that seem trivial but would be a real problem in context)