WEBVTT

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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 Bernese 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 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 that I would have told you

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that they can also wind up with an anxiety disorder,

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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're 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 stretch.

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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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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 stereotypies or swaying stereotypies,

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and actually, humans do this too,

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and in us, 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

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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 trichotillomania,
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.

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I met a monkey named Boonlua,

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and when Boonlua was a baby,

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he was attacked by a pack of dogs,

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and they ripped off both of his legs and one arm,

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and Boonlua dragged himself to a monastery,

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where the monks took him in.

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They called in a veterinarian,
who treated his wounds.

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Eventually, Boonlua wound up

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at an elephant facility,

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and the keepers really decided
to take him under their wing,

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and they figured out what he liked,

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which, it turned out, was mint Mentos

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and Rhinoceros beetles and eggs.

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But they worried, because he
was social, that he was lonely,

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and they didn't want to put
him in with another monkey,

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because they thought with just one arm,

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he wouldn't be able to defend himself or even play.

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And so they gave him a rabbit,

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and Boonlua was immediately a different monkey.

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He was extremely happy to be with this rabbit.

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They groomed each other,
they become close friends,

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and then the rabbit had bunnies,

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and Boonlua was even happier than he was before,

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and it had in a way given him

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a reason to wake up in the morning,

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and in fact it gave him such a reason to wake up

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that he decided not to sleep.

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He became extremely protective of these bunnies,

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and he stopped sleeping,

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and he would sort of nod off

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while trying to take care of them.

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In fact, he was so protective and so affectionate

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with these babies that the sanctuary

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eventually had to take them away from him

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because he was so protective, he was worried

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that their mother might hurt them.

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So after they were taken away, the sanctuary staff

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worried that he would fall into a depression,

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and so to avoid that,

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they gave him another rabbit friend.

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(Laughter)

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My official opinion is that
he does not look depressed.

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(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

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So one thing that I would really like people to feel

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is that you really should feel empowered

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to make some assumptions

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about the creatures that you know well.

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So when it comes to your dog

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or your cat or maybe your one-armed monkey

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that you happen to know,

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if you think that they are traumatized or depressed,

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you're probably right.

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This is extremely anthropomorphic,

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or the assignation of human characteristics

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onto non-human animals or things.

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I don't think, though, that that's a problem.

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I don't think that we can not anthropomorphize.

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It's not as if you can take your
human brain out of your head

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and put it in a jar and then use it

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to think about another animal thinking.

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We will always be one animal wondering

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about the emotional experience of another animal.

NOTE Paragraph

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So then the choice becomes, how
do you anthropomorphize well?

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Or do you anthropomorphize poorly?

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And anthropomorphizing poorly

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is all too common.

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(Laughter)

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It may include dressing your corgis
up and throwing them a wedding,

00:11:52.616 --> 00:11:55.272
or getting too close to exotic wildlife because

00:11:55.272 --> 00:11:57.228
you believe that you had a spiritual connection.

00:11:57.228 --> 00:11:59.206
There's all manner of things.

00:11:59.206 --> 00:12:03.112
Anthropomorphizing well, however, I believe is based

00:12:03.112 --> 00:12:05.830
on accepting our animal
similarities with other species

00:12:05.830 --> 00:12:08.637
and using them to make assumptions

00:12:08.637 --> 00:12:12.276
that are informed about other 
animals' minds and experiences,

00:12:12.276 --> 00:12:14.822
and there's actually an entire industry

00:12:14.822 --> 00:12:17.792
that is in some ways based
on anthropomorphizing well,

00:12:17.792 --> 00:12:20.953
and that is the psychopharmaceutical industry.

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:20.953 --> 00:12:25.473
One in five Americans is currently
taking a psychopharmaceutical drug,

00:12:25.473 --> 00:12:28.128
from the antidepressants
and antianxiety medications

00:12:28.128 --> 00:12:29.950
to the antipsychotics.

00:12:29.950 --> 00:12:31.784
It turns out that we owe this

00:12:31.784 --> 00:12:34.157
entire psychopharmaceutical arsenal

00:12:34.157 --> 00:12:35.889
to other animals.

00:12:35.889 --> 00:12:38.399
These drugs were tested in non-human animals first,

00:12:38.399 --> 00:12:42.335
and not just for toxicity but for behavioral effects.

00:12:42.335 --> 00:12:45.519
The very popular antipsychotic Thorazine

00:12:45.519 --> 00:12:49.265
first relaxed rats before it relaxed people.

00:12:49.265 --> 00:12:51.426
The antianxiety medication Librium

00:12:51.426 --> 00:12:55.249
was given to cats selected for
their meanness in the 1950s

00:12:55.249 --> 00:12:57.640
and made them into peaceable felines.

00:12:57.640 --> 00:13:02.200
And even antidepressants
were first tested in rabbits.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:02.200 --> 00:13:05.104
Today, however, we are not just giving these drugs

00:13:05.104 --> 00:13:07.455
to other animals as test subjects,

00:13:07.455 --> 00:13:09.946
but they're giving them these drugs as patients,

00:13:09.946 --> 00:13:14.429
both in ethical and much less ethical ways.

00:13:14.429 --> 00:13:18.299
SeaWorld gives mother orcas
antianxiety medications

00:13:18.299 --> 00:13:20.943
when their calves are taken away.

00:13:20.943 --> 00:13:23.226
Many zoo gorillas have been given antipsychotics

00:13:23.226 --> 00:13:25.292
and antianxiety medications.

00:13:25.292 --> 00:13:28.165
But dogs like my own Oliver

00:13:28.165 --> 00:13:31.404
are given antidepressants and
some antianxiety medications

00:13:31.404 --> 00:13:33.140
to keep them from jumping out of buildings

00:13:33.140 --> 00:13:35.203
or jumping into traffic.

00:13:35.203 --> 00:13:38.402
Just recently, actually, a study came out in "Science"

00:13:38.402 --> 00:13:40.231
that showed that even crawdads

00:13:40.231 --> 00:13:42.455
responded to antianxiety medication.

00:13:42.455 --> 00:13:44.730
It made them braver, less skittish,

00:13:44.730 --> 00:13:49.780
and more likely to explore their environment.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:49.780 --> 00:13:52.138
It's hard to know how many
animals are on these drugs,

00:13:52.138 --> 00:13:55.602
but I can tell you that the
animal pharmaceutical industry

00:13:55.602 --> 00:13:57.390
is immense and growing,

00:13:57.390 --> 00:14:00.113
from seven billion dollars in 2011

00:14:00.113 --> 00:14:05.692
to a projected 9.25 billion by the year 2015.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:05.692 --> 00:14:09.539
Some animals are on these drugs indefinitely.

00:14:09.539 --> 00:14:13.774
Others, like one bonobo who lives in Milwaukee

00:14:13.774 --> 00:14:15.360
at the zoo there was on them

00:14:15.360 --> 00:14:17.511
until he started to save his Paxil prescription

00:14:17.511 --> 00:14:19.907
and then distribute it among the other bonobos.

00:14:19.907 --> 00:14:24.916
(Laughter) (Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:24.916 --> 00:14:27.805
More than psychopharmaceuticals, though,

00:14:27.805 --> 00:14:30.320
there are many, many, many other

00:14:30.320 --> 00:14:32.968
therapeutic interventions that help other creatures.

00:14:32.968 --> 00:14:35.330
And here is a place where I think actually

00:14:35.330 --> 00:14:37.772
that veterinary medicine can teach something

00:14:37.772 --> 00:14:39.458
to human medicine,

00:14:39.458 --> 00:14:41.348
which is, if you take your dog, who is, say,

00:14:41.348 --> 00:14:43.148
compulsively chasing his tail,

00:14:43.148 --> 00:14:44.926
into the veterinary behaviorist,

00:14:44.926 --> 00:14:47.730
their first action isn't to reach
for the prescription pad;

00:14:47.730 --> 00:14:50.686
it's to ask you about your dog's life.

00:14:50.686 --> 00:14:53.622
They want to know how often your dog gets outside.

00:14:53.622 --> 00:14:56.276
They want to know how much
exercise your dog is getting.

00:14:56.276 --> 00:14:57.761
They want to know how much social time

00:14:57.761 --> 00:15:00.180
with other dogs and other humans.

00:15:00.180 --> 00:15:02.390
They want to talk to you
about what sorts of therapies,

00:15:02.390 --> 00:15:04.905
largely behavior therapies,

00:15:04.905 --> 00:15:07.165
you've tried with that animal.

00:15:07.165 --> 00:15:09.562
Those are the things that
often tend to help the most,

00:15:09.562 --> 00:15:12.891
especially when combined with
psychopharmaceuticals.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:12.891 --> 00:15:15.344
The thing, though, I believe, that helps the most,

00:15:15.344 --> 00:15:17.301
particularly with social animals,

00:15:17.301 --> 00:15:20.439
is time with other social animals.

00:15:20.439 --> 00:15:24.347
In many ways, I feel like I became a service animal

00:15:24.347 --> 00:15:26.851
to my own dog,

00:15:26.851 --> 00:15:30.878
and I have seen parrots do it for people

00:15:30.878 --> 00:15:32.588
and people do it for parrots

00:15:32.588 --> 00:15:34.126
and dogs do it for elephants

00:15:34.126 --> 00:15:37.304
and elephants do it for other elephants.

00:15:37.304 --> 00:15:38.637
I don't know about you;

00:15:38.637 --> 00:15:41.217
I get a lot of Internet forwards

00:15:41.217 --> 00:15:43.433
of unlikely animal friendships.

00:15:43.433 --> 00:15:46.720
I also think it's a huge part of Facebook,

00:15:46.720 --> 00:15:49.597
the monkey that adopts the cat

00:15:49.597 --> 00:15:54.233
or the great dane who adopted the orphaned fawn,

00:15:54.233 --> 00:15:57.237
or the cow that makes friends with the pig,

00:15:57.237 --> 00:16:01.173
and had you asked me eight,
nine years ago, about these,

00:16:01.173 --> 00:16:03.663
I would have told you that they
were hopelessly sentimental

00:16:03.663 --> 00:16:06.786
and maybe too anthropomorphic in the wrong way

00:16:06.786 --> 00:16:09.565
and maybe even staged, and what I can tell you now

00:16:09.565 --> 00:16:12.517
is that there is actually something to this.

00:16:12.517 --> 00:16:16.112
This is legit. In fact, some interesting studies

00:16:16.112 --> 00:16:18.038
have pointed to oxytocin levels,

00:16:18.038 --> 00:16:20.634
which are a kind of bonding hormone

00:16:20.634 --> 00:16:23.040
that we release when we're having sex or nursing

00:16:23.040 --> 00:16:25.629
or around someone that we care for extremely,

00:16:25.629 --> 00:16:28.121
oxytocin levels raising in both humans and dogs

00:16:28.121 --> 00:16:29.515
who care about each other

00:16:29.515 --> 00:16:31.175
or who enjoy each other's company,

00:16:31.175 --> 00:16:33.484
and beyond that, other studies show that oxytocin

00:16:33.484 --> 00:16:35.620
raised even in other pairs of animals,

00:16:35.620 --> 00:16:39.225
so, say, in goats and dogs who were
friends and played with each other,

00:16:39.225 --> 00:16:43.684
their levels spiked afterwards.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:43.684 --> 00:16:46.451
I have a friend who really showed me that

00:16:46.451 --> 00:16:48.875
mental health is in fact a two-way street.

00:16:48.875 --> 00:16:52.874
His name is Lonnie Hodge,
and he's a veteran of Vietnam.

00:16:52.874 --> 00:16:55.496
When he returned, he started working

00:16:55.496 --> 00:16:58.139
with survivors of genocide and a lot of people

00:16:58.139 --> 00:16:59.667
who had gone through war trauma.

00:16:59.667 --> 00:17:02.151
And he had PTSD and also a fear of heights,

00:17:02.151 --> 00:17:04.050
because in Vietnam, he had been

00:17:04.050 --> 00:17:06.295
rappelling backwards out of helicopters

00:17:06.295 --> 00:17:07.730
over the skids,

00:17:07.730 --> 00:17:10.799
and he was givena service dog
named Gander, a labradoodle,

00:17:10.799 --> 00:17:14.250
to help him with PTSD and his fear of heights.

00:17:14.250 --> 00:17:16.910
This is them actually on the first day that they met,

00:17:16.910 --> 00:17:19.502
which is amazing, and since then,

00:17:19.502 --> 00:17:21.267
they've spent a lot of time together

00:17:21.267 --> 00:17:25.517
visiting with other veterans
suffering from similar issues.

00:17:25.517 --> 00:17:28.579
But what's so interesting to me about
Lonnie and Gander's relationship

00:17:28.579 --> 00:17:30.357
is about a few months in,

00:17:30.357 --> 00:17:33.684
Gander actually developed a fear of heights,

00:17:33.684 --> 00:17:37.981
probably because he was
watching Lonnie so closely.

00:17:37.981 --> 00:17:41.450
What's pretty great about this, though,
is that he's still a fantastic service dog,

00:17:41.450 --> 00:17:43.985
because now, when they're both at a great height,

00:17:43.985 --> 00:17:47.343
Lonnie is so concerned with Gander's well-being

00:17:47.343 --> 00:17:53.317
that he forgets to be scared of the heights himself.

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:53.317 --> 00:17:56.598
Since I've spent so much time with these stories,

00:17:56.598 --> 00:17:58.002
digging into archives,

00:17:58.002 --> 00:18:00.456
I literally spent years doing this research,

00:18:00.456 --> 00:18:02.756
and it's changed me.

00:18:02.756 --> 00:18:06.692
I no longer look at animals at the species level.

00:18:06.692 --> 00:18:08.920
I look at them as individuals,

00:18:08.920 --> 00:18:10.492
and I think about them as creatures

00:18:10.492 --> 00:18:13.251
with their own individual weather systems

00:18:13.251 --> 00:18:14.963
guiding their behavior and informing

00:18:14.963 --> 00:18:17.272
how they respond to the world.

00:18:17.272 --> 00:18:20.160
And I really believe that this has made me

00:18:20.160 --> 00:18:22.524
a more curious and a more empathetic person,

00:18:22.524 --> 00:18:25.967
both to the animals that share my bed

00:18:25.967 --> 00:18:28.093
and occasionally wind up on my plate,

00:18:28.093 --> 00:18:30.943
but also to the people that I know

00:18:30.943 --> 00:18:33.894
who are suffering from anxiety

00:18:33.894 --> 00:18:36.521
and from phobias and all manner of other things,

00:18:36.521 --> 00:18:38.496
and I really do believe that

00:18:38.496 --> 00:18:40.744
even though you can't know exactly

00:18:40.744 --> 00:18:44.131
what's going on in the mind of a pig

00:18:44.131 --> 00:18:46.238
or your pug or your partner,

00:18:46.248 --> 00:18:50.055
that that shouldn't stop you
from empathizing with them.

00:18:50.055 --> 00:18:52.544
The best thing that we could do for our loved ones

00:18:52.544 --> 00:18:56.840
is, perhaps, to anthropomorphize them.

NOTE Paragraph

00:18:56.840 --> 00:19:00.341
Charles Darwin's father once told him

00:19:00.341 --> 00:19:05.560
that everybody could lose their mind at some point.

00:19:05.560 --> 00:19:08.391
Thankfully, we can often find them again,

00:19:08.391 --> 00:19:10.562
but only with each other's help.

NOTE Paragraph

00:19:10.562 --> 00:19:12.618
Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:19:12.618 --> 00:19:16.191
(Applause)