Mental Health and Well-Being in Animals doc

[...]... are not animals. ” I would change the title to Mental Health and Well-Being in our Fellow Animals. ” Roger S Fouts, PhD Friends of Washoe Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute Central Washington University Part I Foundations of Animal Mental Health and Well-Being 1 On Understanding Animal Mentation Bernard E Rollin The very idea of a book on mental health and emotional well-being in animals would... behavior! In 1985, Morton and Griffiths produced a classic paper on recognizing pain in animals, in response to researchers complaining about new laws mandating the control of pain These researchers expressed ideology-based agnosticism at knowing how to identify pain in animals Morton and Griffiths gave two responses: first, they provided a calculus for evaluating pain-2 points for the animals not eating,... and physical well-being Finally, as McMillan has pioneered in pointing out, veterinary medicine can benefit immeasurably from the study of animal mental health and wellbeing (McMillan 2002a) Despite an enormous literature clearly evidencing psychogenic and psychosomatic dimensions of sickness in animals and psychological modulators of both pain and disease (for example, chronic pain in animals seems... as in food animal medicine, we do not get to the root of so-called production diseases (i.e., that the production methods are pathological and pathogenic) working against animals physical and mental health Cribbing and weaving in horses, stereotypical behavior in captive species, bar- and tail-biting, and cannibalism and feather-pecking in pigs and chickens are not vices-badness displayed by the animals- as... that moving cattle to a new environment evokes a greater stress response than electro-shock does Temple Grandin has made a career of showing the livestock industry how to profit more by taking cognizance of animals mental health and well-being (see Grandin, this volume) Animal research is a bent reed without taking cognizance of animal thought and feeling Uncontrolled pain in animals results in greater... demands Interestingly enough, “COW comfort” is a major buzz word in the dairy industry, and much more attention is indeed being paid to improving cow comfort Yet, to my knowledge, the dairy industry has yet to admit-as indeed the entire agriculture industry, particularly animal scientists, has yet to admit-that what need to be studied are thought and feeling, happiness and unhappiness, and mental and. .. relevant until the laws forced a change in his gestalt 12 Mental Health and Well-Being in Animals Though often accused of “foot-dragging,” the USDNAPHIS, the agency charged with enforcing and interpreting the Animal Welfare Act, behaved very wisely with regard to pain and distress Although the laws passed in 1985 and went into effect in 1986, the USDA did not even begin to discuss distress until about... field of mental health and well-being in animals But for now, this wealth of information remains, for the most part, widely scattered throughout a vast and diverse array of scientific journals, lay magazines, textbooks, and popular books All of this has resulted in a different kind of challenge for establishing a field of mental health in animals We are not faced with the task of simply erecting a new... erecting a new discipline; we have to reassemble our object of study at the same time With the wellestablished knowledge of the inseparability of the body and mind, until the animal mind and body are reunited, we face severe limitations in making advancements in the understanding of mental health Preface and well-being in animals A second objective of this book, then, is to bring together the fields... the side, cringes and lies down The pain keeps on increasing, the symptoms get worse and he does Xlll not get a minute’s peace He sweats freely, and the lining of his eyes becomes very much reddened and angry and the pain keeps on increasing At this stage his ears begin to lop over and he gets a very haggard look on his face, as if in extreme agony After a few hours he is a pitying sight to . alt="" Mental Health and Well-Being in Animals