Historical: first repertoire of mental disorders in a non-human species

With more than 10 years of data collected and analysed at MONA, a study has been carried out that has shown for the first time that chimpanzees exhibit psychological disorders classified in humans, such as post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety…

To accomplish this, primatologist Yulan Úbeda adapted for chimpanzees the most widely used human psychiatric classification system at an international level. In this way, she obtained nine categories of mental disorders similar to those of humans, and it is the first repertoire of mental illnesses diagnosed in a non-human species.

We hope this adds to the effort to raise public awareness and ultimately helps achieve improvements in legislation.

We recommend reading the article published in National Geographic.

Results published in the scientific journal Journal of Veterinary Behaviour: Úbeda, Y., Fatjó, J., Rostán, C., Crailsheim, D., Gomara, A., Almunia, J., & Llorente, M., (2020). A preliminary investigation on the evaluation of psychopathologies in a group of ex-pet and ex-performer chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): A rating approach based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jveb.2020.08.006