Making sense of behavioral irregularities of great apes | Semantic Scholar

A philosophical examination of the early evolution of sickness and healing provides a window into an understanding of evolving human capacities such as self-awareness, awareness and implications of suffering, theory of mind, altruism, conceptual grasp of sicknessand healing and morality.

This analysis qualitatively analyzed symptoms of psychological distress in a sample of 253 chimpanzees rescued from biomedical research now residing at an accredited chimpanzee sanctuary and includes an illustrative case study of one rescued chimpanzee who engages in self-injurious behaviors and meets modified Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder.

It is argued that this notion fits only a small number of serious psychological conditions, and that most conditions currently regarded as mental illness are cultural constructions, normal reactions to stressful social circumstances, or simply forms of deviant behavior.

In focusing on fundamental properties of disease in man, ethnomedicine can also help to clarify the effects and meanings of disease and thereby make its control more rational.