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Oliver was an extremely dashing,

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handsome, charming, and largely unstable male

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that I completely lost my heart to.

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(Laughter)

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He was a Burmese Mountain Dog,

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and my ex-husband and I adopted him,

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and about six months in,

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we realized that he was a mess.

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He had such paralyzing separation anxiety

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that we couldn't leave him alone.

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Once, he jumped out of our third floor apartment.

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He ate fabric. He ate things, recyclables.

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He hunted flies that didn't exist.

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He suffered from hallucinations.

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He was diagnosed with a canine compulsive disorder

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and that's really just the tip of the iceberg.

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But like with humans,

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sometimes it's six months in

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before you realize that

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the person that you love has some issues.

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(Laughter)

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And most of us do not take the person we're dating

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back to the bar where we met them

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or give them back to the friend that introduced us,

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or sign them back up on Match.com.

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(Laughter)

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We love them anyway,

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and we stick to it,

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and that is what I did with my dog.

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And I was a — I'd studied biology.

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I have a Ph.D in the history of science

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from MIT,

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and had you asked me 10 years ago

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if a dog I loved, or just dogs generally,

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had emotions, I would have said yes,

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but I'm not sure I would have told you

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that they can also wind up with an anxiety disorder

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and a Prozac prescription and a therapist.

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But then, I fell in love, and I realized that they can,

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and actually trying to help my own dog

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overcome his panic and his anxiety,

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it just changed my life.

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It cracked open my world,

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and I spent the last seven years, actually,

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looking into this topic of
mental illness in other animals.

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Can they be mentally ill like people,

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and if so, what does it mean about us?

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And what I discovered is that I do believe

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they can suffer from mental illness,

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and actually looking and trying
to identify mental illness in them

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often helps us be better friends to them

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and also can help us better understand ourselves.

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So let's talk about diagnosis for a minute.

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Many of us think that we can't know

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what another animal is thinking,

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and that is true,

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but any of you in relationships

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— at least this is my case —

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just because you ask someone that you with

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or your parent or your child how they feel

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doesn't mean that they can tell you.

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They may not have words to explain

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what it is that they're feeling,

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and they may not know.

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It's actually a pretty recent phenomenon

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that we feel that we have to talk to someone

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to understand their emotional distress.

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Before the early 20th century,

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physicians often diagnosed emotional distress

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in their patients just by observation.

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It also turns out that thinking about

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mental illness in other animals

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isn't actually that much of a stress.

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Most mental disorders in the United States

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are fear and anxiety disorders,

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and when you think about it, fear and anxiety

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are actually really extremely
helpful animal emotions.

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Usually we feel fear and anxiety
in situations that are dangerous,

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and once we feel them,

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we then are motivated to move away

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from whatever is dangerous.

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The problem is when we begin to feel fear
and anxiety in situations that don't call for it.

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Mood disorders, too, may actually just be

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the unfortunate downside of being a feeling animal,

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and obsessive compulsive disorders also

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are often manifestations of
a really healthy animal thing

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which is keeping yourself clean and groomed.

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This tips into the territory of mental illness

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when you do things like

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compulsively over-wash your hands or paws,

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or you develop a ritual that's so extreme

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that you can't sit down to a bowl of food

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unless you engage in that ritual.

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So for humans, we have "The
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual"

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which is basically an atlas

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of the currently agreed upon mental disorders.

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In other animals, we have YouTube.

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(Laughter)

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This is just one search I did for "OCD dog"

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but I encourage all of you

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to look at "OCD cat."

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You will be shocked by what you see.

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I'm going to show you just a couple examples.

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This is an example of shadow-chasing.

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I know, and it's funny and in some ways it's cute.

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The issue, though, is that dogs
can develop compulsions like this

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that they then engage in all day.

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So they won't go for a walk,

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they won't hang out with their friends,

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they won't eat.

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They'll develop fixations

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like chasing their tails compulsively.

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Here's an example of a cat named Gizmo.

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He looks like he's on a stakeout

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— (Laughter) —

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but he does this for many, many, many hours a day.

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He just sits there and he will paw and paw and paw

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at the screen.

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This is another example of what's considered

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a stereotypic behavior.

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This is a sun bear at the
Oakland Zoo named Ting Ting.

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And if you just sort of happened upon this scene,

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you might think that Ting Ting

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is just playing with a stick,

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but Ting Ting does this all day,

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and if you pay close attention

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and if I showed you guys
the full half-hour of this clip,

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you'd see that he does the exact same thing

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in the exact same order, and he spins the stick

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in the exact same way every time.

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Other super-common behaviors that you may see,

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particularly in captive animals,

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are pacing stereotypes or swaying stereotypes,

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and actually, humans do this too,

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and in us, you know, we'll sway,

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we'll move from side to side.

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Many of us do this, and sometimes, you know,

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it's an effort to soothe ourselves,

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and I think in other animals
that is often the case too.

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But it's not just stereotypic behaviors

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that other animals engage in.

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This is Gigi. She's a gorilla that lives

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at the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston.

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She actually has a Harvard psychiatrist,

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and she's been treated for a mood disorder

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among other things.

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Many animals develop mood disorders.

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Lots of creatures

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— this horse is just one example —

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develop self-destructive behaviors.

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They'll gnaw on things

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or do other things that may also soothe them,

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even if they're self-destructive,

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which could be considered similar

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to the ways that some humans cut themselves.

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Plucking.

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Turns out, if you have fur or feathers or skin,

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you can pluck yourself compulsively,

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and some parrots actually have been studied

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to better understand [triplotomania?],
or compulsive plucking in humans,

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something that affects

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20 million Americans right now.

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Lab rats pluck themselves too.

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In them, it's called barbering.

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Canine veterans of conflicts of Iraq and Afghanistan

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are coming back with what's
considered canine PTSD,

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and they're having a hard time reentering civilian life

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when they come back from deployments.

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They can be too scared to
approach men with beards

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or to hop into cars.

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I want to be careful and be clear though.

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I do not think that canine PTSD

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is the same as human PTSD.

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But I also do not think that my PTSD

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is like your PTSD,

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or that my anxiety or that my sadness is like yours.

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We are all different.

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We also all have very different susceptibilities.

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So two dogs, raised in the same household,

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exposed to the very same things,

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one may develop, say, a
debilitating fear of motorcycles,

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or a phobia of the beep of the microwave,

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and another one is going to be just fine.

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So one thing that people ask me pretty frequently:

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is this just an instance of humans

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driving other animals crazy?

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Or, is animal mental illness just
a result of mistreatment or abuse?

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And it turns out we're actually

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so much more complicated than that.

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So one great thing that has happened to me

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is recently I published a book on this,

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and every day now that I open my email

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or when I go to a reading

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or even when I go to a cocktail party,

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people tell me their stories

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of the animals that they have met.

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And recently, I did a reading in California,

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and a woman raised her hand
after the talk and she said,

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"Dr. Braitman, I think my cat has PTSD."

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And I said, "Well, why? Tell me a little bit about it."

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So, Ping is her cat. She was a rescue,

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and she used to live with an elderly man,

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and one day the man was vacuuming

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and he suffered a heart attack, and he died.

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A week later, Ping was discovered in the apartment

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alongside the body of her owner,

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and the vacuum had been running the entire time.

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For many months, up to I think
two years after that incident,

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she was so scared she couldn't be in
the house when anyone was cleaning.

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She was quite literally a scaredy cat.

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She would hide in the closet.

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She was un-self-confident, and shaky,

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but with the loving support of her family,

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a lot of a time, and their patience,

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now, three years later,

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she's actually a happy, confident cat.

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Another story of trauma and
recovery that I came across

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was actually a few years ago.

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I was in Thailand to do some research.