《瘋狂英語》精選輯:寵物也憂傷

Yes, They Get Depressed, Too!

People often say that pets and their owners grow to look like each other. Recent research from Brisbane claims that pets also have emotions like their owners and even the same psychological problems.

Professor Judith Blackshaw is an animal 1)behaviourist on a quest to solve human misery. Along with her psychiatrist colleague, Professor Ivor Jones, she’s looking for the root causes of depression and anxiety. Miss Izzy, the 2)Staffordshire terrier, isn’t just along for the walk; the professors believe 3)domestic animal behaviour is the key.

Blackshaw: Well I think the big thing we are trying to achieve is to show people that the 4)species of animals are very similar. A depressed person and, of course there is a lot of depression in the world, and a depressed animal are very similar. For example, I had a cat who died from depression. Now we might call it grief or broken heart, but this cat’s companion was actually killed by a dog.

The cat was so 5)traumatized it refused to eat; the owners not picking up the signs in time for Judith Blackshaw to treat it. To Professor Jones the situation sounds all too human.

Jones: There are many conditions where there are close similarities between psychiatric states and animal states.

It’s not a view though shared by mainstream psychiatry where animal behaviour is not considered relevant to human depression. But to professors Blackshaw and Jones the 6)parallels between humans and animals are so powerful, they can only be explained by a common source.

Jones: Well, psychiatry has found all sorts of ways of understanding all these psychiatric 7)syndromes: depression, anxiety, 8)obsession and so on. But they haven’t described how it evolved, and I think that’s what we’re trying to do.

Blackshaw: This is the exciting thing there’s never been a study that I know of that’s compared human and animal cases.

There’s more to this study, though, than simply two academics in passionate pursuit of pure knowledge. According to public health authorities, 800,000 Australians suffer some form of depression each year. Treating depression costs half a billion dollars a year and that’s not including the cost of anxiety illnesses. Dollars and cents though don’t measure the human cost.

Two-legged animals aren’t the only beneficiaries of the professors’ work. Already a few 9)vets have 10)twigged to the parallels between people and their pets. When the family 11)pooch or 12)moggie gets depressed, they’re prescribing 13)Prozac and other human psychiatric drugs.

For Judith Blackshaw and Ivor Jones, the success of human drugs on animals is just one further piece of evidence for how close the species are.

Blackshaw: Cats, dogs and humans are emotionally very, very similar. After all we’re all domesticated animals.

注釋：
1) behaviorist                                         n. 行為學者，行為科學家
2) Staffordshire terrier                          斯塔福德狗
3) domestic                                            adj. 馴服的
4) species                                              n. 物種
5) traumatize                                          v. 使受損傷，使受精神上創(chuàng)傷
6) parallel                                                n. 類似，相似物
7) syndrome                                           n. 病癥
8) obsession                                          n. 強迫癥
9) vet                                                       n. 獸醫(yī) 
10) twig                                                   v. 注意，了解
11) pooch                                               n. <美俚>狗，雜種狗
12) moggie                                            n. <英俚>貓，也作moggy
13) Prozac百憂解，一種抗抑郁藥物，通過提高大腦中復合胺（患有抑郁癥的病人被檢測出大腦中這種物質(zhì)的含量很低）的含量達到振奮精神的作用。