Depressed dogs, cats with OCD — what animal madness means for us humans

Behind those funny animal videos, sometimes, are oddly human-like problems. Laurel Braitman studies non-human animals who exhibit signs of mental health issues — from compulsive bears to self-destructive rats to monkeys with unlikely friends. Braitman asks what we as humans can learn from watching animals cope with depression, sadness and other all-too-human problems.

Oliver was an extremely dashing,

handsome, charming and largely unstable male

that I completely lost my heart to.

(Laughter)

He was a Bernese mountain dog,

and my ex-husband and I adopted him,

and about six months in,

we realized that he was a mess.

He had such paralyzing separation anxiety

that we couldn't leave him alone.

Once, he jumped out of our third floor apartment.

He ate fabric. He ate things, recyclables.

He hunted flies that didn't exist.

He suffered from hallucinations.

He was diagnosed with a canine compulsive disorder

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

But like with humans,

sometimes it's six months in

before you realize that

the person that you love has some issues.

(Laughter)

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

back to the bar where we met them

or give them back to the friend that introduced us,

or sign them back up on Match.com.

(Laughter)

We love them anyway,

and we stick to it,

and that is what I did with my dog.

And I was a — I'd studied biology.

I have a Ph.D. in history of science

from MIT,

and had you asked me 10 years ago

if a dog I loved, or just dogs generally,

had emotions, I would have said yes,

but I'm not sure that I would have told you

that they can also wind up with an anxiety disorder,

a Prozac prescription and a therapist.

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

and actually trying to help my own dog

overcome his panic and his anxiety,

it just changed my life.

It cracked open my world.

And I spent the last seven years, actually,

looking into this topic of
mental illness in other animals.

Can they be mentally ill like people,

and if so, what does it mean about us?

And what I discovered is that I do believe

they can suffer from mental illness,

and actually looking and trying
to identify mental illness in them

often helps us be better friends to them

and also can help us better understand ourselves.

So let's talk about diagnosis for a minute.

Many of us think that we can't know

what another animal is thinking,

and that is true,

but any of you in relationships —

at least this is my case —

just because you ask someone that you're with

or your parent or your child how they feel

doesn't mean that they can tell you.

They may not have words to explain

what it is that they're feeling,

and they may not know.

It's actually a pretty recent phenomenon

that we feel that we have to talk to someone

to understand their emotional distress.

Before the early 20th century,

physicians often diagnosed emotional distress

in their patients just by observation.

It also turns out that thinking about

mental illness in other animals

isn't actually that much of a stretch.

Most mental disorders in the United States

are fear and anxiety disorders,

and when you think about it, fear and anxiety

are actually really extremely
helpful animal emotions.

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

and once we feel them,

we then are motivated to move away

from whatever is dangerous.

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

Mood disorders, too, may actually just be

the unfortunate downside of being a feeling animal,

and obsessive compulsive disorders also

are often manifestations of
a really healthy animal thing

which is keeping yourself clean and groomed.

This tips into the territory of mental illness

when you do things like

compulsively over-wash your hands or paws,

or you develop a ritual that's so extreme

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

unless you engage in that ritual.

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

which is basically an atlas

of the currently agreed-upon mental disorders.

In other animals, we have YouTube.

(Laughter)

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

but I encourage all of you

to look at "OCD cat."

You will be shocked by what you see.

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

This is an example of shadow-chasing.

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

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

that they then engage in all day.

So they won't go for a walk,

they won't hang out with their friends,

they won't eat.

They'll develop fixations

like chasing their tails compulsively.

Here's an example of a cat named Gizmo.

He looks like he's on a stakeout

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

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

at the screen.

This is another example of what's considered

a stereotypic behavior.

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

And if you just sort of happened upon this scene,

you might think that Ting Ting

is just playing with a stick,

but Ting Ting does this all day,

and if you pay close attention

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

you'd see that he does the exact same thing

in the exact same order, and he spins the stick

in the exact same way every time.

Other super common behaviors that you may see,

particularly in captive animals,

are pacing stereotypies or swaying stereotypies,

and actually, humans do this too,

and in us, we'll sway,

we'll move from side to side.

Many of us do this, and sometimes

it's an effort to soothe ourselves,

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

But it's not just stereotypic behaviors

that other animals engage in.

This is Gigi. She's a gorilla that lives

at the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston.

She actually has a Harvard psychiatrist,

and she's been treated for a mood disorder

among other things.

Many animals develop mood disorders.

Lots of creatures —

this horse is just one example —

develop self-destructive behaviors.

They'll gnaw on things

or do other things that may also soothe them,

even if they're self-destructive,

which could be considered similar

to the ways that some humans cut themselves.

Plucking.

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

you can pluck yourself compulsively,

and some parrots actually have been studied

to better understand trichotillomania,
or compulsive plucking in humans,

something that affects

20 million Americans right now.

Lab rats pluck themselves too.

In them, it's called barbering.

Canine veterans of conflicts of Iraq and Afghanistan

are coming back with what's
considered canine PTSD,

and they're having a hard time reentering civilian life

when they come back from deployments.

They can be too scared to
approach men with beards

or to hop into cars.

I want to be careful and be clear, though.

I do not think that canine PTSD

is the same as human PTSD.

But I also do not think that my PTSD

is like your PTSD,

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

We are all different.

We also all have very different susceptibilities.

So two dogs, raised in the same household,

exposed to the very same things,

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

or a phobia of the beep of the microwave,

and another one is going to be just fine.

So one thing that people ask me pretty frequently:

Is this just an instance of humans

driving other animals crazy?

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

And it turns out we're actually

so much more complicated than that.

So one great thing that has happened to me

is recently I published a book on this,

and every day now that I open my email

or when I go to a reading

or even when I go to a cocktail party,

people tell me their stories

of the animals that they have met.

And recently, I did a reading in California,

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

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

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

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

and she used to live with an elderly man,

and one day the man was vacuuming

and he suffered a heart attack, and he died.

A week later, Ping was discovered in the apartment

alongside the body of her owner,

and the vacuum had been running the entire time.

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

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

She was quite literally a scaredy cat.

She would hide in the closet.

She was un-self-confident and shaky,

but with the loving support of her family,

a lot of a time, and their patience,

now, three years later,

she's actually a happy, confident cat.

Another story of trauma and
recovery that I came across

was actually a few years ago.

I was in Thailand to do some research.

I met a monkey named Boonlua,

and when Boonlua was a baby,

he was attacked by a pack of dogs,

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

and Boonlua dragged himself to a monastery,

where the monks took him in.

They called in a veterinarian,
who treated his wounds.

Eventually, Boonlua wound up

at an elephant facility,

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

and they figured out what he liked,

which, it turned out, was mint Mentos

and Rhinoceros beetles and eggs.

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

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

because they thought with just one arm,

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

And so they gave him a rabbit,

and Boonlua was immediately a different monkey.

He was extremely happy to be with this rabbit.

They groomed each other,
they become close friends,

and then the rabbit had bunnies,

and Boonlua was even happier than he was before,

and it had in a way given him

a reason to wake up in the morning,

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

that he decided not to sleep.

He became extremely protective of these bunnies,

and he stopped sleeping,

and he would sort of nod off

while trying to take care of them.

In fact, he was so protective and so affectionate

with these babies that the sanctuary

eventually had to take them away from him

because he was so protective, he was worried

that their mother might hurt them.

So after they were taken away, the sanctuary staff

worried that he would fall into a depression,

and so to avoid that,

they gave him another rabbit friend.

(Laughter)

My official opinion is that
he does not look depressed.

(Laughter)

So one thing that I would really like people to feel

is that you really should feel empowered

to make some assumptions

about the creatures that you know well.

So when it comes to your dog

or your cat or maybe your one-armed monkey

that you happen to know,

if you think that they are traumatized or depressed,

you're probably right.

This is extremely anthropomorphic,

or the assignation of human characteristics

onto non-human animals or things.

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

I don't think that we can not anthropomorphize.

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

and put it in a jar and then use it

to think about another animal thinking.

We will always be one animal wondering

about the emotional experience of another animal.

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

Or do you anthropomorphize poorly?

And anthropomorphizing poorly

is all too common.

(Laughter)

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

or getting too close to exotic wildlife because

you believe that you had a spiritual connection.

There's all manner of things.

Anthropomorphizing well, however, I believe is based

on accepting our animal
similarities with other species

and using them to make assumptions

that are informed about other
animals' minds and experiences,

and there's actually an entire industry

that is in some ways based
on anthropomorphizing well,

and that is the psychopharmaceutical industry.

One in five Americans is currently
taking a psychopharmaceutical drug,

from the antidepressants
and antianxiety medications

to the antipsychotics.

It turns out that we owe this

entire psychopharmaceutical arsenal

to other animals.

These drugs were tested in non-human animals first,

and not just for toxicity but for behavioral effects.

The very popular antipsychotic Thorazine

first relaxed rats before it relaxed people.

The antianxiety medication Librium

was given to cats selected for
their meanness in the 1950s

and made them into peaceable felines.

And even antidepressants
were first tested in rabbits.

Today, however, we are not just giving these drugs

to other animals as test subjects,

but they're giving them these drugs as patients,

both in ethical and much less ethical ways.

SeaWorld gives mother orcas
antianxiety medications

when their calves are taken away.

Many zoo gorillas have been given antipsychotics

and antianxiety medications.

But dogs like my own Oliver

are given antidepressants and
some antianxiety medications

to keep them from jumping out of buildings

or jumping into traffic.

Just recently, actually, a study came out in "Science"

that showed that even crawdads

responded to antianxiety medication.

It made them braver, less skittish,

and more likely to explore their environment.

It's hard to know how many
animals are on these drugs,

but I can tell you that the
animal pharmaceutical industry

is immense and growing,

from seven billion dollars in 2011

to a projected 9.25 billion by the year 2015.

Some animals are on these drugs indefinitely.

Others, like one bonobo who lives in Milwaukee

at the zoo there was on them

until he started to save his Paxil prescription

and then distribute it among the other bonobos.

(Laughter) (Applause)

More than psychopharmaceuticals, though,

there are many, many, many other

therapeutic interventions that help other creatures.

And here is a place where I think actually

that veterinary medicine can teach something

to human medicine,

which is, if you take your dog, who is, say,

compulsively chasing his tail,

into the veterinary behaviorist,

their first action isn't to reach
for the prescription pad;

it's to ask you about your dog's life.

They want to know how often your dog gets outside.

They want to know how much
exercise your dog is getting.

They want to know how much social time

with other dogs and other humans.

They want to talk to you
about what sorts of therapies,

largely behavior therapies,

you've tried with that animal.

Those are the things that
often tend to help the most,

especially when combined with
psychopharmaceuticals.

The thing, though, I believe, that helps the most,

particularly with social animals,

is time with other social animals.

In many ways, I feel like I became a service animal

to my own dog,

and I have seen parrots do it for people

and people do it for parrots

and dogs do it for elephants

and elephants do it for other elephants.

I don't know about you;

I get a lot of Internet forwards

of unlikely animal friendships.

I also think it's a huge part of Facebook,

the monkey that adopts the cat

or the great dane who adopted the orphaned fawn,

or the cow that makes friends with the pig,

and had you asked me eight,
nine years ago, about these,

I would have told you that they
were hopelessly sentimental

and maybe too anthropomorphic in the wrong way

and maybe even staged, and what I can tell you now

is that there is actually something to this.

This is legit. In fact, some interesting studies

have pointed to oxytocin levels,

which are a kind of bonding hormone

that we release when we're having sex or nursing

or around someone that we care for extremely,

oxytocin levels raising in both humans and dogs

who care about each other

or who enjoy each other's company,

and beyond that, other studies show that oxytocin

raised even in other pairs of animals,

so, say, in goats and dogs who were
friends and played with each other,

their levels spiked afterwards.

I have a friend who really showed me that

mental health is in fact a two-way street.

His name is Lonnie Hodge,
and he's a veteran of Vietnam.

When he returned, he started working

with survivors of genocide and a lot of people

who had gone through war trauma.

And he had PTSD and also a fear of heights,

because in Vietnam, he had been

rappelling backwards out of helicopters

over the skids,

and he was givena service dog
named Gander, a labradoodle,

to help him with PTSD and his fear of heights.

This is them actually on the first day that they met,

which is amazing, and since then,

they've spent a lot of time together

visiting with other veterans
suffering from similar issues.

But what's so interesting to me about
Lonnie and Gander's relationship

is about a few months in,

Gander actually developed a fear of heights,

probably because he was
watching Lonnie so closely.

What's pretty great about this, though,
is that he's still a fantastic service dog,

because now, when they're both at a great height,

Lonnie is so concerned with Gander's well-being

that he forgets to be scared of the heights himself.

Since I've spent so much time with these stories,

digging into archives,

I literally spent years doing this research,

and it's changed me.

I no longer look at animals at the species level.

I look at them as individuals,

and I think about them as creatures

with their own individual weather systems

guiding their behavior and informing

how they respond to the world.

And I really believe that this has made me

a more curious and a more empathetic person,

both to the animals that share my bed

and occasionally wind up on my plate,

but also to the people that I know

who are suffering from anxiety

and from phobias and all manner of other things,

and I really do believe that

even though you can't know exactly

what's going on in the mind of a pig

or your pug or your partner,

that that shouldn't stop you
from empathizing with them.

The best thing that we could do for our loved ones

is, perhaps, to anthropomorphize them.

Charles Darwin's father once told him

that everybody could lose their mind at some point.

Thankfully, we can often find them again,

but only with each other's help.

Thank you.

(Applause)