Even though depression is not a new topic, the disorder for the most part has been rather mysterious and hard to understand in the eyes of the common public, more particularly the ones who have never associate with the disorder themselves. There are a lot of research going into depression and often times people don’t think about how depression slowly reveals itself to the scientists studying the matter. One of the ways that our understanding of depression has been increasing is through animal models, which leaves us the question of “How does scientists develop animal models in mental disorders such as depression? ” The paper ‘Major Depression and Animals Model’ by Ma-Li Wong (...) demonstrate the general process and consensus around Animal Modelling for Depression and hence answer our question.
Ma-Li Wong…show more content… Right at the beginning, a question was asked by the author herself of how can a disorder that seem so human such as depression can be develop into an animal model. Professor Wong then explains the fact that it is simply impossible to create animal models that would fit all of the characteristics of various disorder such as ‘schizophrenic’ or ‘depression’ but rather move onto acquiring a more realistic goal of reproducing phenotypes, which are observable traits and characteristic of an organism, that deem to fit the disorder that are being modelled. ()The phenotype can be created through various model we can put the subject in and hence, replicate the feeling of stress and/or separation. There are different criteria a model must meet in order to be consider successful and effective. The criteria includes reliability and multiple types of validity, which will be discuss in details throughout the analysis along with different examples of models demonstrating the categories of validity. The paper also talks about the historical value of animal modelling and the ethical issues that goes along with it but that will not be discuss in this analysis.
