I think it's worth highlighting that there exist some behavioural syndromes that look suspiciously like symptoms of mental disorders but don't closely mimic the most common human diagnoses; you mentioned foreign limb syndrome in one of your previous posts. Also the plethora of known stereotypies should be, imo, thought of as mental disorders: the species-specific like cribbing or fly-snapping and ones that are popular across phylogeny, like biting oneself, excessive grooming, walking in circles (these are popular with humans too!).
I'm sure that many animals I've met would get some diagnosis if their problems with daily living were taken as seriously as those of humans (for example, a mare that never grasped how she should reciprocate allogrooming and was kind of alienated as a result). But I'm not sure whether it tells us something about animal minds or just about human practices around health.
That sort of brings up the interesting topic of what a diagnosis is and what it's for. From what I understand, any horse person worth their salt would be aware of the problems with such a mare. Is it more useful/more correct to be able to say "this mare has autism" vs "this mare has never grasped how she should reciprocate allogrooming and was kind of alienated as a result"?
I seem to remember it was a thing that felines in particular, if held in a cage for long enough and with not enough opportunities for natural behaviour (that is, lions/tigers/leopards in a typical pre-21st century zoo) would pace back and forth endlessly, and continue to do so if you moved them to a larger and more open environment?
I recently attended a scientific talk that described experiments recently done in the speaker's lab which involved putting mice in situations that would give them PTSD (although I'm having trouble remembering whether the term PTSD was ascribed directly to the mice). It kind of chills me that deliberately making mice suffer passes the bar for being sufficiently ethical, even though I can see an argument on the grounds of the results allowing us to better treat humans (or other animals?) with PTSD.
Genuinely asking, do you think that this is less ethical than, for example, giving mice cancer, repeatedly drawing their blood, artificially inseminating them without consent, or killing them when the experiment is over? Or do you think generally experimenting on mice is unethical? Or that you can experiment on them, but not deliberately cause suffering for its own sake?
Very interesting that there was such a huge leap in rates of depression and PTSD symptoms when comparing chimpanzees in the wild compared to sanctuaries. It seems like there would be a fair amount of situations in the wild that would be frightening (being attacked by other primates, large cats) yet perhaps evolutionarily niche interactions with humans are a categorically different type of fear? I wonder what that says about rising mental illness in the modern world even though life is technically easier.
Considering that those disorders affect very basic emotional process mechanisms, which are likely very similar in at least all mammals, I can't think of any reason why animals wouldn't experience them. Cognitive aspects of anxiety disorders (PTSD or others) or depression seem to me very obviously to be post-hoc "rationalisations", not their core feature (it's all limbic, as my old shrink would have said).
It would be interesting to figure out if animals experience disorders where disturbed THINKING is much more of a core symptom (essentially, full blown psychoses).
I think it's worth highlighting that there exist some behavioural syndromes that look suspiciously like symptoms of mental disorders but don't closely mimic the most common human diagnoses; you mentioned foreign limb syndrome in one of your previous posts. Also the plethora of known stereotypies should be, imo, thought of as mental disorders: the species-specific like cribbing or fly-snapping and ones that are popular across phylogeny, like biting oneself, excessive grooming, walking in circles (these are popular with humans too!).
I'm sure that many animals I've met would get some diagnosis if their problems with daily living were taken as seriously as those of humans (for example, a mare that never grasped how she should reciprocate allogrooming and was kind of alienated as a result). But I'm not sure whether it tells us something about animal minds or just about human practices around health.
That sort of brings up the interesting topic of what a diagnosis is and what it's for. From what I understand, any horse person worth their salt would be aware of the problems with such a mare. Is it more useful/more correct to be able to say "this mare has autism" vs "this mare has never grasped how she should reciprocate allogrooming and was kind of alienated as a result"?
Cats can suffer from dementia when they get old, just like humans.
I seem to remember it was a thing that felines in particular, if held in a cage for long enough and with not enough opportunities for natural behaviour (that is, lions/tigers/leopards in a typical pre-21st century zoo) would pace back and forth endlessly, and continue to do so if you moved them to a larger and more open environment?
Fluoxetine is often prescribed to dogs diagnosed with OCD (example: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dogtraining/s/gzoSWwnCBg).
I recently attended a scientific talk that described experiments recently done in the speaker's lab which involved putting mice in situations that would give them PTSD (although I'm having trouble remembering whether the term PTSD was ascribed directly to the mice). It kind of chills me that deliberately making mice suffer passes the bar for being sufficiently ethical, even though I can see an argument on the grounds of the results allowing us to better treat humans (or other animals?) with PTSD.
Genuinely asking, do you think that this is less ethical than, for example, giving mice cancer, repeatedly drawing their blood, artificially inseminating them without consent, or killing them when the experiment is over? Or do you think generally experimenting on mice is unethical? Or that you can experiment on them, but not deliberately cause suffering for its own sake?
Very interesting that there was such a huge leap in rates of depression and PTSD symptoms when comparing chimpanzees in the wild compared to sanctuaries. It seems like there would be a fair amount of situations in the wild that would be frightening (being attacked by other primates, large cats) yet perhaps evolutionarily niche interactions with humans are a categorically different type of fear? I wonder what that says about rising mental illness in the modern world even though life is technically easier.
Considering that those disorders affect very basic emotional process mechanisms, which are likely very similar in at least all mammals, I can't think of any reason why animals wouldn't experience them. Cognitive aspects of anxiety disorders (PTSD or others) or depression seem to me very obviously to be post-hoc "rationalisations", not their core feature (it's all limbic, as my old shrink would have said).
It would be interesting to figure out if animals experience disorders where disturbed THINKING is much more of a core symptom (essentially, full blown psychoses).