Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

Evolutionary psychiatry attempts to explain and examine the development and prevalence of psychiatric disorders through the lens of evolutionary and adaptationist theories. In this edited volume, leading international evolutionary scholars present a variety of Darwinian perspectives that will encourage readers to consider ‘why’ as well as ‘how’ mental disorders arise. Using insights from comparative animal evolution, ethology, anthropology, culture, philosophy and other humanities, evolutionary thinking helps us to re-evaluate psychiatric epidemiology, genetics, biochemistry and psychology. It seeks explanations for persistent heritable traits shaped by selection and other evolutionary processes, and reviews traits and disorders using phylogenetic history and insights from the neurosciences as well as the effects of the modern environment. By bridging the gap between social and biological approaches to psychiatry, and encouraging bringing the evolutionary perspective into mainstream psychiatry, this book will help to inspire new avenues of research into the causation and treatment of mental disorders.

• Provides new ways of understanding mental health and mental disorder for psychiatrists, psychologists, mental health professionals, anthropologists, evolutionary scholars, and patients and carers.
• Brings together cutting-edge evolutionary thinking from leading international evolutionary scholars in fields related to mental health.
• Considers an individual’s functioning in the context of their environment, providing a framework for readers to integrate the biological and social approaches to psychiatry.
• Helps destigmatise mental disorders through demonstrating that they arise from common human vulnerabilities.