My dog Clementine is on Zoloft, an antidepressant. She’s not alone, veterinarians report that a lot of dogs are on Prozac and similar drugs. Clementine also has a veterinary behavioralist, a health care provider many humans struggle to find. A vet behavioralist is sort of like a doggie psychiatrist, who also treats cat behavior. According to Stat News:
Prozac prescriptions for dogs are on the rise, veterinarians across the country acknowledge, along with a myriad of cheaper generic mood stabilizers sold for humans but applied to pets’ separation anxiety, socialization fears, biting habits, or other problematic behavior.
The apparent mental health crisis in pets parallels a human one. Veterinary psychiatrists said the evidence is anecdotal but the increase in mood stabilizers mirrors the increase in humans and there are other parallels. However, it appears to be something of a chicken and egg dilemma. It’s not clear if pets are more depressed or if their owners just know more about the drugs available.
“The human world has become more attuned to mental health. Since Covid, we’re talking about it,” said Melissa Bain, a veterinarian focused on behavioral medicine at the University of California, Davis. “When we start to recognize things in humans, we recognize it in our dogs too.”
Is the increase in mood stabilizing drugs for pets just because more people know they exist? Or are we merely superimposing our own mental health struggles on our pets?
“There’s so many similarities in people’s emotions towards their children and emotions towards their pets,” said Kogan. “We might be, for example, overly anxious about their well-being, just as a lot of people are about their children.”
Apparently, Clementine’s use of Zoloft is indicative of the human condition at the moment. As in humans, a cheap generic prescription drug is easier and cheaper than one-on-one therapy or extensive training. In addition, humans are having a hard time finding therapists. The supply just isn’t large enough to meet demand.
That increase, experts told STAT, says more about the human mental health crisis in America — and the ready availability of inexpensive generic medicines. Americans have reported more depression and anxiety in recent years, and everyone is talking more about it. But while behavioral specialists, therapists, and counseling services have struggled to keep up with the onslaught, relatively inexpensive antidepressants haven’t.
Meanwhile, licensed providers are struggling to meet the demand for psychotherapy and other behavioral health needs, while federal regulators are pressing for more affordable access to these services.
As in the human world, oftentimes a prescription — particularly for a cheap, generic anxiety pill — is easier and more affordable than the hundreds to thousands of dollars that training classes or boutique behaviorist practices that vets also recommend can cost.
Or perhaps people are short on patience and in no mood to deal with bad pet behavior.
Veterinarians who spoke to STAT chalk the rise in pet psychiatry up to a number of factors: We care more, as a culture, about animal welfare these days. There also has been a persistent pilgrimage of rural rescue animals plucked from southern states and shipped to cities with more capacity and resources for adoption — but also far more people, noises, and environmental stressors. Pandemic shutdowns then exacerbated the trend, with record adoption rates sometimes clearing out whole shelters.
Also, the purpose of many pet adoptions was to boost peoples’ mental health when they were stuck at home. Now many people are going back to the office and struggling to reconcile competing demands (dog used to interacting all day with bosses who wants workers in chairs).
Americans are still struggling with their mental health after covid upended their lives and daily routines. They got pets to shelter with, sometimes from actual rescue shelters with their new dog’s bad behavior already present. When pet ownership did not run smoothly, they sometimes turn to mood stabilizing drugs. What is clear from the article is that there are a variety of factors. As people turned to mood stabilizing drugs for their own anxieties, so did their pets. Since pets cannot talk it had to be their human companions who decided drugs for their pets would benefit them too.
Devon, 60% of all babies are born under Medicaid. Americans live in poverty in a Socialist Welfare State and it’s depressing. A 30-year-old single-parent Mother in Ft. Myers earning $65,000 per year putting a child on Obamacare receives NO tax credits. She can’t even deduct the insurance! Multi-millionaire CEOs pay NO taxes on their Employer-based insurance but poor single-parent teachers must.
A multi-millionaire 60-year-old couple in Ft. Myers working part-time earning $100,000/year gets $1,608/month or $19,296/year in tax credits for Obamacare’s ONLY PPO, from Blue Cross MONOPOLY, a premium of $33,972/year with a $9,450 deductible. So these millionaires pay $14,676 and the taxpayers $19,296 tax credits.
Trump’s plan PPO is only $759/month! Blue Cross is scamming America from sea to shining sea and the FAKE News Press and YOU Devon NEVER say a word after decades. Biden KILLED Trump’s low-cost PPO 9 days ago on Good Friday. Don’t say anything Devon and let Socialized Medicine win to PROTECT Employer-based insurance as you and Dr. Goodman always do.
Devon, do you know why the poor single-parent Mom cannot even deduct her Obamacare premium? If employees could deduct Individual Insurance that would be the Cataclysmic Collapse of Employer-based insurance. Goodman & YOU Devon must be getting big MONEY to NEVER mention the DANGER of Overpriced Employer-based insurance.
I don’t know how your wife can stomach to look at you Devon as you prolong the life of DEADLY Employer-based benefits. She probably doesn’t understand like me, obviously. Do you remember me telling you over 20 years ago by phone that you would lose your Blue Cross if you became too sick to work? I remember and I bet you do too. I thought, what an idiot PhD!
Devon, large tax-free HSAs, where singles can save $12,000/year and families double or $24,000, targets wealth to the American masses. YOU keep fighting for the Socialists Devon. You have no honor to pledge like America’s Founding Fathers. You don’t care about the billion of unborn Americans that will soon be born. YOUR job was to pass FREEDOM to the following generations, YOU are failing. YOU should be like me. Granted, I don’t get paid like you but it’s OK.
My wife also points out too many dogs are bred too tightly. Breeders have a brother or a sister dog with characteristics they like, so they breed two siblings. That results in health problems.