Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, Gorillas on Drugs, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves
    Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, Gorillas on Drugs, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves
    Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, Gorillas on Drugs, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves
    Audiobook11 hours

    Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, Gorillas on Drugs, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves

    Written by Laurel Braitman

    Narrated by Madeleine Maby

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    **“Science Friday” Summer Reading Pick**
    **Discover magazine Top 5 Summer Reads**
    **People magazine Best Summer Reads**

    “A lovely, big-hearted book…brimming with compassion and the tales of the many, many humans who devote their days to making animals well” (The New York Times).

    Have you ever wondered if your dog might be a bit depressed? How about heartbroken or homesick? Animal Madness takes these questions seriously, exploring the topic of mental health and recovery in the animal kingdom and turning up lessons that Publishers Weekly calls “Illuminating…Braitman’s delightful balance of humor and poignancy brings each case of life….[Animal Madness’s] continuous dose of hope should prove medicinal for humans and animals alike.”

    Susan Orlean calls Animal Madness “a marvelous, smart, eloquent book—as much about human emotion as it is about animals and their inner lives.” It is “a gem…that can teach us much about the wildness of our own minds” (Psychology Today).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateJun 10, 2014
    ISBN9781442371354
    Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, Gorillas on Drugs, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves
    Author

    Laurel Braitman

    Laurel Braitman is the New York Times bestselling author of Animal Madness. She has a PhD from MIT in the history and anthropology of science and is the Director of the Writing and Storytelling Program at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Wired, and a variety of other publications. She lives between rural Alaska and her family’s citrus and avocado ranch in Southern California. She can be reached at LaurelBraitman.com.

    Related to Animal Madness

    Related audiobooks

    Nature For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Positive Punishment

      May 20, 2020

      POSITIVE PUNISHMENT has long been a commonly used technique in old-school dog training. This simply means using something that the dog finds aversive. This is added to their environment. It can be a word or gesture — such as shouting at the dog or ta

      1 min read

    • Article

      Positive Reinforcement

      May 20, 2020

      Positive Reinforcement
      1 min read

    • Article

      Fever In The Woods

      Aug 26, 2020

      Fever In The Woods
      13 min read

    • Article

      The Dogs

      Jan 27, 2020

      The Dogs
      13 min read

    • Article

      Dog Days

      Jan 23, 2022

      Dog Days
      8 min read

    • Article

      Sharp-toothed Charm

      Dec 8, 2021

      Sharp-toothed Charm
      4 min read

    • Article

      Bark Side Of The Moon

      Oct 29, 2019

      Bark Side Of The Moon
      4 min read

    • Article

      Ruff Reckoning

      Mar 11, 2020

      Ruff Reckoning
      5 min read

    • Article

      Deer-ly Loved

      Apr 4, 2024

      Deer-ly Loved
      3 min read

    • Article

      Lying In Wait

      Jun 12, 2020

      Lying In Wait
      7 min read

    • Article

      Lying In Wait

      Jun 12, 2020

      Lying In Wait
      7 min read

    • Article

      Animal Magic

      Feb 9, 2023

      Animal Magic
      2 min read

    • Article

      For The Love Of Animals

      Nov 23, 2022

      For The Love Of Animals
      7 min read

    • Article

      Clam Down

      Apr 13, 2017

      Clam Down
      9 min read

    • Article

      Spider Girl

      Feb 1, 2024

      Like part of a web, my identity is tethered to my family, in which I am one of three girls—to this day, our mom still lovingly addresses us in a single unit as “Girls.” The post Spider Girl appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Animal Intelligence

      Jun 5, 2023

      Animal Intelligence
      4 min read

    • Article

      Boots On The Ground

      Aug 26, 2022

      Boots On The Ground
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Animal Madness

    4/5

    27 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 1/5
      Read the Holy Bible if we want to understand ourselves. There is where you learn about our creation, our Creator, and the problems and cures within each of our lives.
    • 3/5
      Those of us who are pet owners and consider our animals to be a part of the family have no trouble believing that animals do possess the consciousness that means they are capable of independent thought and the ability to feel emotions. But this also means that we believe that they possess the capability to suffer from mental illness, much in the way that human beings do. It is this sad idea that Laurel Braitman explores in her book, Animal Madness. Braitman and her then husband adopted a Bernese Mountain dog named Oliver. He was being surrendered by his current family but Braitman was given little information about why. It turned out that Oliver suffered terribly when left alone, even going so far as to jump out of a closed window in their apartment, plummeting to the cement below. Miraculously, he survived his fall but his anxiety and terror didn't abate at all. Although they tried everything to help Oliver, nothing worked to calm him. His clear, unmanageable, life long distress sent Braitman on a search into the origins and treatments of mental illness in animals. In addition to her own dog and other canines, Braitman looked at whales, dolphins, elephants, birds, horses, and primates, among others, and the documented problems they suffer as domesticated or captive animals. Taking newspaper reports, interviews with keepers, and communications with experts in the fields of animal behavior, veterinary medicine, and mental health, Braitman discusses the problem of diagnosing animals without anthropomorphizing them, the ways in which their diagnoses parallel human mental health biases of the time, the option of medicating or changing the behavior of the animals, and the ways in which human interference with wild animals has led to so many of the atypical, extreme behaviors we need to control or alleviate. Using anecdotal stories to support the wider neurological theory underpinning her conclusions, Braitman covers animals suffering from mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, OCD, and PTSD and even discusses the idea of whether or not animals can be suicidal. Although the book purports to suggest that understanding animals will help us understand ourselves, there is only a very tenuous link to that idea. Since animals cannot tell us what they are feeling, human beings must extrapolate solely from observations what is going on. It is therefore not surprising that it is all framed in the same terms that human mental illness is described.All of these observations have, by necessity, taken place on animals either living in captivity or that have been domesticated to one extent or another rather than factoring in any animals in the wild who manifest the same behaviors. Is this because they don't have these issues in the wild? Is it because it is too hard to study the same wild animals over extended amounts of time? Is it because these animals don't survive long in the wild? These are questions that Braitman doesn't address or acknowledge, making the book less complete than it should be for the conclusions it draws. There is certainly no doubt that the ways in which we bend animals to be what we want and expect of them, in zoos, parks, and our homes, does them no favors mentally and her indictment of our role in animals' mental anguish is not without basis for sure but as she cautioned in the very opening pages of the book, she seems to be anthropomorphizing quite a bit herself. It is sad to read about the variety of ways that animals harm themselves and others of their species and interesting to read about the ways, some more palatable than others, that we people try to help them conquer these atypical behaviors. Over all, the book opens a small window into the discussion about the well being of animals, specifically those under human care, living lives we don't recognize as normal, rich, and satisfying for them.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Through extensive research on various species throughout the world, the author reveals hows animals, like humans, can suffer from mental illness and can possibly be helped through treatment. Her interest in the subject began with her own dog, a rescue, who exhibited severe emotional issues and fear of abandonment. He was aggressive, compulsive, and one time jumped out of a 4th story window.This was a difficult and at times disturbing book for me to read. As a wildlife volunteer I observe animals in their natural habitats and am awed at what they do instinctively. Many of the animals the author profiled where wild animals – elephants, gorillas, birds – captured by humans; their stories are heartbreaking. When wild animals are removed from their natural environment, behavioral issues are often the result. I confess, I’m not a big fan of zoos or circuses. Many do an adequate job of providing for the animals, but far too many do not; a nice cage is still a cage.Audio production: The book was read by Madeleine Maby in a pleasant, easy to listen to voice. The book moves through a series of stories about the various animals the author researched, making this a good choice for audio over print.
    • 4/5
      People aren’t the only creatures that can go crazy. Braitman experiences this firsthand when she acquires a crazy dog, a dog that so desperately needed constant human companionship that he hurled himself out a second-story window onto concrete when Braitman left the house. The author goes in search of more information about animals who exhibit extreme behavior and the result is this fascinating book.
    • 4/5
      Humans and animals have shared this planet and some animals have even evolved side by side with humans. It should not be surprising that the animals that share our lives like dogs, cats and birds, or the animals that are forced into a more human life like performing, working or zoo animals would develop mental health disorders alongside the humans that they interact with. Through the lens of her troubled dog, Oliver, Laurel Braitman explores the world of animal mental health in everything from mice to dogs and gorillas to elephants in order to show that humans and every other animal are strikingly similar. I have always believed that animals were capable of emotions and when I studied animal behavior in school, I was glad to know that this thought was becoming more widely accepted. It is now not a question of 'if,' but to what degree. Though most of the stories in Animal Madness are anecdotal, there are stories amassed from professionals in the field with a whole life of observational experiences that provide good proof that through psychological meds and behavior therapy, an animal with severe trauma and possible PTSD could recover and lead a healthy life for their species. Some of the stories are absolutely heartbreaking; for example a working elephant who was pregnant and forced to work during her pregnancy and ultimately giving birth while logging. The calf rolled down the hill they were working on and died. When the mother refused to work, she was blinded. Ultimately, however, though the story is grim, the end result shows how we all need the same things: love, understanding of our needs, therapy and medicine. This book was provided for free in return for an honest review.