Happiness in Animals - Do Animals Get Depressed?

Depression is a condition of severe unhappiness that lasts for more than just a few days.

When you are depressed you experience a loss of interest in life, reduced activity levels, sometimes you eat too much or too little, your sleep gets restless or you start a pattern of insomnia. As your interest in life gets reduced so does your activity level.

When you are depressed life just is not enjoyable anymore - no matter what your circumstances are - whether the sun is shining or not - you feel sad and unhappy.

In addition to this your thoughts are coloured in a negative way, you have a pessimistic view of life and yourself.

As animals are very emotional beings they too can become unhappy and develop depression.

This maybe caused by loss of their companions, by being kept alone for too long, by a lifestyle which is unnatural or foreign to the animal.

Abuse, the experience of cruelty or otherwise inflicted traumatic experience has great impact on an animals emotions and may cause severe anxiety or/ and depression.

If an animal has to experience adverse conditions it can not escape it almost certainly will become depressed.

An unhappy animal may


lose interest in her surroundings
appear to be withdrawn or far away
lose his appetite
become lethargic
and sometimes ill tempered or aggressive

Since the emotions modulate the immune system a depressed animal has a reduced capacity to fight off infection and thus may even become physically ill or his recovery from an already existing physical condition may be compromised.

In pets we often find that the level of unhappiness an owner experiences may also cause depression in his animal. So if his owner is depressed the dog, cat or bird may also feel severely unhappy.