Do some animal like dogs even have mental illness like we do?

Answer 1

Modeling mental illness in animals has been greeted with skepticism, but despite the obstacles, researchers have made startling progress in reproducing behavioral symptoms in laboratory animals analogous to those seen in humans with disorders.

Mental illness would seem to be singularly human, a subjectively experienced distortion of consciousness affecting uniquely human attributes: thought, feeling, and language.

For that reason, it presents a unique challenge to the basic scientist seeking to reproduce its symptoms in experimental animals commonly used in the laboratory. Diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, or other somatic conditions may be reliably replicated, but how does one reproduce depression, anxiety, or delusional paranoia in a laboratory rat?

"Modeling mental illness in animals still seems to many people to be an outrageous idea," Barbara Lipska, Ph.D., of the clinical brain disorders branch of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), told Psychiatric News. "People cannot believe that psychiatric disorders can be modeled in a rat or a mouse or a primate because these disorders are believed to be inherently human. Delusions, hallucinations—how are we possibly able to reproduce these symptoms in an animal, and even if we do it, how would we know, since the animals cannot communicate verbally?"

But Lipska and other scientists say that in fact they are able to produce with greater and greater reliability certain behaviors in experimental animals—if not the underlying neuroanatomical or biochemical disorder itself—that are analogous to the behaviors in humans with mental illness and that are the phenomenological reflection of that underlying human disorder.

Daniel Weinberger, M.D., chief of the clinical brain disorders branch, said that new genetic technologies and other refinements are expanding the research potential in animal modeling. Today, scientists at NIMH are modeling schizophrenia in rats and disorders of memory and cognition in mice.

Elsewhere, researchers including Rene Hen, Ph.D., of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Irwin Lucki, Ph.D., of the University of Pennsylvania, are modeling depression and anxiety in laboratory animals.

"You can do experiments in animals that you cannot do in humans," Weinberger said. "The reason we do it is to help us understand underlying disease mechanisms, test causal hypotheses, and find new treatments."

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Answer 2

we are wise and self conscious because we've a mind. it incredibly is the position idea is residing. No mind, no thoughts, no expertise. Human psychopaths have something incorrect with their brains as is actual proven by ability of a lobotomy. no better psycho, only a good fuzzy vegetable.

Answer 3

I have a friend who had a dog who was depressed and was on antidepressants daily. Someone once suggested I take my dog to the doggy psychiatrist for evaluation. I'm not sure I believe it, but there's something to think about.

Answer 4

all animals get what we do allergy's or being obese not to mention being in a mood when Mr jingles lightly snaps and gives you hay leave me alone to getting a cold and sneezing on us and giving there cold ya my brother in law had a cat that was mental on minuet it was cool the next it was clawing whom ever had it on there lap and I'm sure dogs get the same thing

Answer 5

They're not smart enough to have mental illness. You need an intellect.

Answer 6

I don't know if they have the same ones we have or have the same symptoms, but I've had some weird dogs and cats so I'd say yes.

Answer 7

Some animals are social creatures. If we isolate a social creature, like in a small zoo or cage, it will go insane.

Answer 8

yes
they do have such illness
i have seen many cases in my study where dogs suffer from brain tumour
i am a veterinary student.

Answer 9

yes- not exactly like us but there are some with "issues"

i have a friend with a cat thats on seditives due to its high anxity levels- bites self and really jumpy

Answer 10

I have a dog with turrets syndrome