Improving animals' emotional health is vital for global resilience
Emotions are essential to help us navigate our world. They impact learning and memory, helping us to understand and predict the behaviour of others – fundamental for building the social relationships that are so important to us.
Positive emotions encourage us to approach resources or people that can be beneficial, whilst negative emotions help us to avoid potentially dangerous situations. But if negative emotions are frequent and long-lasting, they can have damaging physical consequences.
Experiencing positive emotions can have beneficial effects that are thought to ‘undo’ some of the damage and help us learn and build new skills.
Why is emotional health so important?
Good emotional health is not just nice to have, but essential for staying resilient and healthy.
The wellbeing of both people and animals can be assessed by considering quality of life, which evaluates the balance of positive and negative experiences over their lifetime. This highlights the essential need to have positive experiences and recognises that whilst negative experiences should be minimised, it is impossible (and even unhealthy) to avoid them completely. Meaning, it is crucial that when animals (and the people who depend upon them) face negative experiences and emotions, they have the resilience to cope.
Resilience describes the process of returning to a positive emotional and physical state when challenged by adversity. It requires skills such as problem solving and emotional regulation, influenced by factors like genetics, environment, past experiences, and emotional health.
Animals are the backbone of people’s lives
Animals can be critical to the livelihoods and resilience of communities around the world.
For example, there are 100 million working horses, donkeys and mules worldwide. Recognised by the United Nations Committee on World Food Security as ‘working livestock’, they are relied on by an estimated 600 million people. These animals support income generation, access to water and education, food security, and gender equality. They support community resilience when responding to disasters and climate shocks, reducing future vulnerability.
Animals have rich social and emotional lives and can be extremely resilient. They are capable of learning and problem solving - skills that enable them to perform roles and tasks in service of people. But they can often be in poor health, dysregulated, unable to cope with their environment, and experiencing long-term trauma. Many negative events over a lifetime can cause permanent damage to the neural and physiological systems that allow us to cope with stress.
But the opposite is also true – positive experiences over time build resilience, and this is a powerful force for change.
Emotional health and compassionate handling
When we look at an animal’s daily and lifetime experience, interacting with people is one of the most frequent things they experience. Each time they are given an instruction, engage with their handler, or encounter people, they are interacting. They can experience hundreds of interactions daily and thousands over their lifetimes, each shaping their wellbeing.
When animals are handled in a way that causes fear, pain, or confusion, they experience stress and anxiety. Over time, this can lead to chronic fear and learned helplessness, a state of trauma where the animal feels powerless and unresponsive. Inhumane handling can also cause physical injuries, behavioural issues, and a decline in health and quality of life.
Compassionate handling, on the other hand, avoids suffering and promotes wellbeing. It recognises that animals are sentient, understanding how their behaviour relates to their emotional state. It turns handling into a positive experience.
The power of positive emotional health
Positive interactions build trust and lead to stronger bonds with people. They give animals choice and control, fostering a sense of security and wellbeing. An animal that feels safe and understood is more likely to be healthy, cooperative, and content. This means fewer injuries, less anxiety, and a happier life overall.
Handling with compassion does not cost anything and can be done anywhere in the world, making it a powerful way to generate good emotional health and improve quality of life for working animals.
This year, the UN is committed to improving health and wellbeing as part of its sustainable development mission. Better health and wellbeing for animals mean better lives for people around the world, building a more compassionate and resilient society.
This article was co-authored by Dr Jennifer Wathan and India Hurford-Jones, Media and Moblisation Officer at Brooke.
Dr Jennifer Wathan is a Global Animal Welfare Advisor at international working animal charity Brooke, and holds a Psychology PhD in studying the Production and Perception of Facial Expression in Horses from the University of Sussex.
