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Mental Health and Well-Being in Animals is a first edition text released by Blackwell Publishing and edited by Franklin D. McMillan in 2005. Dr. McMillan and many other well-known contributors such as Bernard E. Rollin, Temple Grandin, Karen Overall, Françoise Wemelsfelder, Jaak Panksepp, and Amy Marder, in addition to others, have collaborated on this text to provide the reader with a comprehensive view of animal mental health and well being. This new release brings together the differing aspects of philosophy, comparative psychology, animal behavior, cognitive, and neuroscience with respect to animal mental health.
The text is sectioned into four parts: Part I: Foundations of Animal Mental Health and Well-Being, Part II: Emotional Distress, Suffering, and Mental Illness, Part III: Mental Wellness, and Part IV: Special Populations. Special attention is devoted to the unique circumstances of farm animals, laboratory species, and captive birds. The laboratory animals are in a peculiar situation because for so long the plight of these species was ignored in the interest of human welfare and well being without realizing how important the environment and conditions around them impinge on the very research that they are subjected to. Most scientists now are understanding and continue to discover the importance of stress and positive well being on the physiology and mental health of laboratory species even if just relevant to the outcome of accurate data collection. No one benefits from erroneous research data, neither the general public, the scientific community, nor the laboratory animals themselves.
In addition to being editor, Dr. McMillan also contributed several essays to the book. Although all interesting, one of the more compelling chapters is "Emotional Maltreatment in Animals." He compares the challenging and frustrating situations of childhood physical and emotional mistreatment with that of animals and proposes a definition of emotional maltreatment, which includes passive neglect and active abuse. The legal system has had great difficulty in recognizing the importance of negative emotional health in children, on both their mental and physical health, and even greater challenges arise when animal behaviorists, ethologists, and scientists insist that emotional maltreatment should be a serious concern in the animal population as well. Often the burden of proof of emotional maltreatment lays within the child's emotional sphere, each child handling and responding to stress in many varied ways. By outlining the hurdles that child protection services has and continues to face, the advocates for animal emotional welfare can better prepare themselves with knowledge. Animals can be observed to act and react in a multitude of ways to emotional maltreatment, both on a behavioral and physiological level, but how does one identify and categorize their emotional state? Dr. McMillan poses thought-provoking questions and offers initial steps in correcting deficits within the public and scientific communities with regard to emotional mistreatment of animals, whether by neglect or intentional harm.
Overall this book is interesting, full of thought-provoking questions and ideas, and opens up a relatively new concept to those readers who may not have considered the actual cost of the emotional health of animals. Research shows that mental health and well-being has farther-reaching effects than purely whether the animal is content with its surroundings. This book incorporates all aspects of the relationship between mental and physical health, from ethical to scientific, and why such concepts like environmental enrichment are relevant to animals, from pets to farm and laboratory species. Readers unfamiliar with these theories will find this book a useful introduction to an important subject and a tool to investigate the subject more thoroughly.
McMillan, Franklin, ed. Mental Health and Well-Being in Animals. Blackwell Publishing, Ames IA, First ed. 2005.
Sandra L. Jex is a veterinarian and consultant.