Can animals suffer post-traumatic stress disorder?

IN THE early hours of the last day of May, one of the biggest explosions to shake Afghanistan resounded across the capital city of Kabul.

The impact of the tanker truck bombing, an insurgent attack that claimed more than 150 lives and injured at least 700, broke windows and cracked ceilings 2km from the blast’s epicentre.

My house is nearby, and I woke to the roar and the shaking of windows and walls. I was unhurt, but the experience was difficult to get over. Although I have lived and worked as a journalist in Afghanistan for three years, I have found that one never gets used to violent conflict.

But as strenuous as it was for me, it seemed to be even more so for my cat, Lola. About 20 minutes after the blast, I found her hiding in the bathroom, cowering behind the radiator. It took almost an hour of petting and hugs to calm her.

For the next week Lola seemed edgy. Small sounds would startle her and she followed me everywhere. She would caterwaul when I left the house and be clingy when I returned. She was eating less and losing weight. It took me a while to realise she might not be only physically unwell. Could Lola, I wondered, have post-traumatic stress disorder?

She certainly wasn’t the first animal to be shaken by one of Afghanistan’s violent attacks. Hannah Surowinski, director of an animal shelter in Kabul called Nowzad, told me she frequently sees the sort of anxiety and stress I was observing in Lola.

“Like people, animals react to trauma in many different ways,” Surowinski said. “How it presents itself in that animal is individual to them,”

The US military has seen this reaction to stress in its working dogs. Its veterinarians say about 5% of those that have served in Afghanistan and Iraq suffer from “canine PTSD,” which can make some dogs aggressive, timid or unable to do their jobs.

The diagnosis, known as C-PTSD, is still debated among some in the veterinary field. But research on PTSD in animals is growing, said Stacy Lopresti-Goodman, associate professor of psychology at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia, in the US.

“Given similarities in brain structures responsible for stress responses, animals exhibit symptoms which resemble those of PTSD in humans,” she said.

Lopresti-Goodman pointed to her own research on hundreds of chimpanzees used in biomedical research, about a quarter of which displayed symptoms of PTSD for years after their retirement.

Scholars have also documented PTSD symptoms in parrots captured in the wild, kept as pets and then abandoned. Others have detected such symptoms in African elephants that witnessed “disruptive” events such as mass culling, poaching or translocation.

The good news is that stress and anxiety disorders among animals can be treated. Prescription medications, such as antidepressants or anti-anxiety drugs, are available for animals. But Lopresti-Goodman said she prefers an approach that prioritises “re-establishing safe environments and trusting relationships”.

Lola, for her part, is doing better, but still jumps at sounds as slight as the dropping of a spoon.