How Do You Treat Mental Illness in a Bonobo?

Brian is a manlike Pan paniscus who was born at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center , but spent most of his life at the Milwaukee County Zoo . His puerility was rough , thanks to an scurrilous founding father , and as he transition into former adulthood , his prospects seemed grim .

When humankind suffer mental illness , we can talk to our healer , talk over our problems with them , and participate in our own intervention . But it is n’t so simple-minded when the patient does n’t speak . The staff at the zoo turned to Harry Prosen , chair of the psychiatry department at the Medical College of Wisconsin . Brian became his first non - human patient .

At The Atlantic , Alexis Madrigaltells the both distressing and heartwarming taleof Brian ’s suffering and eventual healing :

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Prosen first dictate Paxil , to help with Brian ’s anxiety , occasionally add on by Valium , on the bad day . “ The knockout of the drug therapy , ” Prosen tell apart Braitman , “ was that the other bonobos could pop out to see him for who he really was , which was really a cool footling dude . ”

Meanwhile , Prosen and the zookeeping faculty began Brian ’s therapy , focusing on make change to their own behavior and his surround . They speak quietly and moved tardily and consistently . No sudden cause or loud noise . They made each of his years exactly the same , and only introduced Modern things slowly and advisedly . They had Brian hang out with anthropoid who were younger than him , so that he could learn what he ’d never been taught as a kid : play .

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By 2001 , after four hard age of therapy and improvement , Brian had start to desegregate into the Milwaukee troop . The zookeepers check it as substantial that a fresh female parent let him tinge her 10 - solar day - old child , and over the the next few year , his behavior became more and more socially aware . They peg his 16th natal day , in 2006 , as the time when he “ started play his years . ” He loves carrying around the babies in the troop , and even manage to have his own children . And , as his keeper Barbara Bell recalled , he went off Paxil at some compass point , after he took to sharing it ( ! ) with the other apes .

In the end , bonobos are n’t so different from our species . A compounding of carefully controlled drug , a supportive social web , and basic empathy can help anybody – human or animal – conversion from suffering to thriving .

Read the entire story atThe Atlantic :

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