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Towards a Sociobiological Model of Depression a Marsupial Model (Petaurus breviceps)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

I. H. Jones ,
D. M. Stoddart  and
J. Mallick
I. H. Jones*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Tasmania, Australia
D. M. Stoddart
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, University of Tasmania, Australia
J. Mallick
Affiliation:
Departments of Psychiatry and Zoology, University of Tasmania, Australia
*
Professor I. H. Jones, Department of Psychiatry, University of Tasmania, 43 Collins Street, Hobart, Tasmania 7000, Australia
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Abstract

Background

This is a sociobiological approach to depression using hierarchy and its hypothesised relevance to self-esteem in the marsupial sugar glider (Petaurus breviceps).

Method

Differential access to resources between the dominant and submissive animal is measured by observation in four stable colonies. The dominant animals from two of these colonies are then introduced into the other two, resulting in the transferred former dominants becoming subordinate. Behavioural and biochemical measures relevant to depression and involving access to resources are then repeated. These measures include eating, drinking, social and sexual access, motility, grooming and biochemical estimates of cortisol and testosterone.

Results

Subordinate animals have significantly less access to resources, both in the stable colony and when the formerly dominant animals become subordinate.

Conclusions

A sociobiological approach using a hierarchy model equating resource-holding potential with self-esteem, exemplified by this study, may provide new concepts and insights into the phenomenology and pathophysiology of depression. It allows comparisons to be made between animal behaviour and cognition: the lack of such has been a major difficulty in animal studies hitherto. The findings are possibly more relevant to dysthymia than to affective disorder and imply a relationship between low resource-holding potential in sub-human animals as a phylogenetic antecedent of some of the cognitive and affective aspects of depression in man.

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 166 , Issue 4 , April 1995 , pp. 475 - 479
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1995 

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