It should be noted that man is an animal like any other. Just as they may suffer from various diseases and ailments, cats, dogs and other pets also like.

This is explained by an expertduring his experience in internal veterinary medicine, specializing in neurology and in neuroscientific research, he has met depressed monkeys, restless horses, obsessive-compulsive donkeys, obsessive-compulsive parrots, cats with dementia, anxious dogs, hamsters with mental disorders. Beware, seals complain of physical pain, they do not. have, rabbits exhibiting facial tics, hedgehogs with sleep cycle disorders, antisocial sheep and how many people seem crazier than a goat. In other words, any animal with mental abilities (thoughts and feelings) may suffer from a mental disorder at some point in their lives.

These changes are very different from behavioral changes which ethologists can treat, because we are talking about brain processes that lead to the patient suffering from a subjective lack of well-being,

brain changesmainly in the diencephalon (part of the emotional brain), makes them behave and relate to their environment in a certain way, and perceive a reality that is very different from what it is.

A few years ago we talked about the unidirectional paradigm of neuroscience, according to which any change to the brain directly affected the mind; In other words, if you have a traumatic brain injury, you may lose mental abilities such as controlling your emotions.

Today, neuroscience has shown that this paradigm is bidirectional, that the mind can influence the structure and connectivity of the brain.

Symptoms of a mentally disturbed pet, dog or cat

Compulsive behavior (chasing the tail, licking the limbs, repeatedly washing the paws, pulling out the hairs, etc.).

Depression (sleeps more than normal for his age, drastic decrease in appetite over several days)

Anxiety (excessive licking, compulsive hand rubbing, shaking, fearful body language, behavioral changes, alone or in the presence of another person)

Diagnose these mental illnessestreating them, healing them and improving their quality of life, besides being very comforting, can enlighten us about our own human condition and help us both to understand them and to improve our relationship with them.

If you want to read more articles like this, we recommend you visit our Animals category.