Companion animals experience genuine psychological wellbeing and distress, and addressing mental health as well as physical health is essential for comprehensive welfare care.
Companion animal mental health is an emerging field that recognises psychological suffering as a serious welfare concern alongside physical disease. Separation anxiety in dogs causes genuine distress — panic, destructive behaviour, self-injury — during hours when owners are away. Chronic stress in cats from multicat household tensions, inadequate resources or environmental poverty manifests in physical health consequences including bladder disease. These are welfare harms that owners may not recognise as psychological in origin. The treatment landscape has improved significantly: behavioural medications combined with behaviour modification programmes, environmental modification and Fear Free veterinary practices that minimise fear-based conditioning all contribute to better mental health outcomes. Recognising and treating companion animal mental health is a welfare obligation not an indulgence.