Iless Within Animals : Mental Illness Within Animals

The “father of psychoanalysis”, Sigmund Freud, was next to reveal the amazing discovery during the early 1930s throughout psychotherapy sessions. Although his view on the therapeutic benefits of human-animal interactions were not recognized for over two decades after the time of his death in 1939-- he is also a component to the beginning of animal-assisted therapy in mental health treatments. Freud believed that his dog—Jofi-- could “sense” tension from the patients and used distance as a method of signaling the occurrence. The farther away that Jofi would stand from the patient indicated the amount of tension that he felt from them and vice versa.

Emotional support animals can take on a multitude of jobs that “may include reminding the handler to take medicine, providing safety checks or room searches, or turning on lights for persons with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, interrupting self-mutilation by persons with dissociative identity disorders, and keeping disoriented individuals from danger,” (Brennan). These animals are often considered pets but are actually so much more than that, emotional support animals have a very important role in protecting the mental health of their owners and keep them safe. Not only do these animals protect people’s mental health but they also give people a purpose. Taking care of one of these dogs or other animals gives people something to take care of and focus on. Knowing that there is another living thing that relies on them can be very grounding and keep people connected to something outside of themselves.

I think every single day we are personally connected with animals. We eat animals for food, wear animal skins for clothes, own animals as pets, use animals for recreation, and experiment on animals to test drugs and consumer products. We are aware of this, yet we naturally give little thought to the overwhelming number of animals that we use in these ways, and what the animals themselves might be suffering as we use them for our purposes. While no non-human animal on this planet has the cultured rational abilities that we do, many, however, have mental capacities that enable them to experience pain, suffering, and anxiety

Firstly, animals in captivity show distraught behavior and don’t have the same abilities as those in the wild. For example, in the article The Loneliest Elephant written by Tracy Tullis, it states, “With limited space and and no infants to care for, captive elephants can become catatonically bored. A great majority of elephants in American zoos -- as much as 80 percent according to a 2013 study by the Honolulu Zoo -- develop disturbing neurotic behaviors, such as repetitive swaying and head bobbing.” Furthermore, it is clear that some animals in zoos behave differently, in a negative manner, in zoos than in their natural habitat (Tullis, 3). Also, a wildlife behavioral biologist Toni Frohof talks about Happy, an elephant kept in isolation at the Bronx Zoo. His words in The Loneliest Elephant was, “She exhibits self-awareness, yet one of the most important aspects of her psychological and physical life, the ability to be around other elephants, she’s been deprived of.” This shows, elephants who are caged in seclusion don’t feel the same as other elephants who get to be around each other 24/7; Happy is forced to be alone for the rest of her life (Tullis, 3). Concludingly, elephants and other animals can form mental and physical issues while caged or isolated.

Like us humans, animals do become depressed when they are isolated and separated from others. Studies have shown that pig’s crave affection and are easily depressed when denied playtime. Animals like pigs can feel emotionally and physically but I am still unsure if they are fully aware why they do some things. People

Jeremy Rifkin had made such impact on readers through his article “A Change of Heart about Animals”. Not only did he inform us the reality that animals do have feelings, he also unbounded the label we had long given to the animals, thus fully altered our perspectives about these fellow creatures. In regard to the influence, I myself am not excluded. As a matter of fact, since I was a kid, I have started raising pets. As long as it seems, I have built myself an assumption about these domestic animals as they don’t differ much from humans’ natural behavior in life. They have feelings, family and awareness of surroundings.

Medical professionals have recently seen the positive effects animals are able to provide to their patients with mental disabilities. The emotional support dog MA recognizes

Nepps, & Bruckno, (2014) and Souter & Miller,(2007) results were determined by pre/ post questionnaires and scales that viewed each participant mood before and after each session to see the outcome and effectiveness. It showed a dramatic increase in mood. It was also shown that that therapeutic alliance is enhanced with the addition of a therapy dog within a group setting with adult clients in a residential drug abuse treatment setting. Animal assisted therapy has also been shown to reduce feelings of anger and symptoms of PTSD, which can contribute to an overall improvement of mood and reduce depressive

Dogs can help us humans with mental health. Many service dogs are used to help people who are deaf or people that are blind. How about people with mental issues? Dogs not only help us with physical problems but also with mental problems like depression. In the article “Therapy pets and humans with mental health issues” the author “ dog time” starts to state in the 3 paragraph “Trained animals [iii] are used to benefit patients suffering with emotional and behavioral disorders, depression, autism, substance abuse, and dementia.” (2010) This can show how animals can help us with mental issues because animals can understand many struggles us humans have, because after their trained they can not only understand us but also

One anxiety disorder that contains trauma related thoughts, negative moods, and alterations in arousal such as anger or hypervigilance is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This disorder has been classified to have high rates of depression and substances abuse. According to Glintborg and Hansen (2017), Adults experiencing PTSD are one of the most difficult populations to treat and have up to a 50 percent chance of dropping out of treatment. However, a new therapeutic approach researchers are now exploring is animal treatment. Professionals are establishing goal-directed therapeutic intervention for this population with Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT). When being exposed to an animal, studies have shown positive effects in an individual’s

“The No Kill Advocacy Center defines ‘irremediable physical suffering’ as an animals who has ‘a poor or grave prognosis for being able to live without severe, unremitting pain even with comprehensive, prompt, and necessary veterinary care,’ such as animals in fulminant organ system. But some shelters and their allies have suggested that the definition is too narrow as it does not allow for mental suffering” (Bekoff, Marc). In this quote, it shows how they are doubtful, but in this article, we are trying to prove why they are wrong. Also, we are going to prove how and why that animals can feel emotional trauma and how they are wrong and inconsiderate of non-human emotions. In this article, he asks if animals feel emotional trauma that causes them to want to die. His response was, “of course they can. Without getting into a long discussion of whether animals have a concept of death that incorporates their knowing that if they die the pain will end, there can be no doubt that animals who are suffering profound emotional trauma want it to stop right now, just as we would” (Bekoff, Marc). It clearly states that he believes that animals do feel emotions just as we do. Animals feel same as

A woman with posttraumatic stress disorder said, “It was such a breakthrough. I think I’m a very different person having had these experiences” (Meinersmann et al., 2008, p. 39), while discussing her therapy program. However, no traditional therapy program brought this response; instead, it was equine-assisted psychotherapy (EAP). Equine assisted psychotherapy is a form of treatment, which uses horses as facilitators to improve mental health. Though some people dismiss EAP as a developing approach, horses may offer opportunities to heal that human therapists cannot. First, the horses encourage engagement in therapy sessions through the opportunities they offer and the equine environment (Bachi et al., 2012; Masini, 2010). Second, horses may

For those with real and severe psychiatric needs, emotional support animals provide a calming presence to the stresses of travel. A passenger simply needs to provide a signed letter from a licensed mental health professional. Even though the research has not fully proven the benefit of support animals, these passengers have a legitimate need that appears to be filled by the pet. Others are not as truthful. Since emotional support animals fly free, many people are dishonest about the purpose of their pets. Due to the ease at which a person can forge medical notes, more people have joined the emotional support bandwagon. The result is a free ride next to their pet, but it comes at the expense of other

It is important to remember that animals of all kinds can have emotions and thoughts. Many zoos do a decent job addressing situations that deal with animal’s mental issues, after

In this course, I discovered many new things and expanded my knowledge as I learned about animal emotions, their representation in the media, their moral status and more. When reflecting back over the wide array of topics covered in the course, there were two areas that resonated strongly for me and made me reconsider my own views. The first was the discussion of the hierarchy of animal rankings and how that affects their treatment. The second was the exploration of the capacity animals have to feel emotions and their anatomical similarities to humans. In the following paragraphs I will reflect on these two areas of the course, current opinions related the each area and why they had such a profound impact on me.