Evolutionary Psychiatry
(Information about the Evolutionary Psychiatry Network is at this link.)
Soon after joining the faculty in the Psychiatry Department at the University of Michigan I found myself frustrated because the field seemed to lack a solid scientific foundation that could contain battles between psychoanalysts, behaviorists, and biological psychiatrists. Faculty colleagues in biology helped me realize that my fine education had covered only one half of of biology; all traits need not only an explanation of how they work, but also an evolutionary explanation of why they are the way they are. In1984 I published an article about how evolution could be useful for psychiatry, and soon realized that the project could succeed only after understanding why natural selection left us vulnerable to medical disorders in general. Work with George Williams advanced that project wonderfully, and evolutionary medicine now provides a foundation for evolutionary psychiatry. However, it is hard to frame hypotheses correctly and harder to test them. The 2023 article describes the opportunities and the challenges.
Evolutionary psychiatry: foundations, progress and challenges, World Psychiatry, 2023
See also the related editorial by Jerry Wakefield.
Anxiety disorders in evolutionary perspective. 2022 Chapter in Evolutionary Psychiatry
Nesse, Randolph M. (2017). Evolutionary foundations for psychiatric research and practice. In B. J. Sadock, V. A. Sadock, & P. Ruiz (Eds.), Kaplan & Sadock’s comprehensive textbook of psychiatry (Tenth edition, pp. 769–780). Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer.
Nesse RM & Williams GC Are mental disorders diseases, Chap 14 from Why We Get Sick, 1994.
Nesse, R. M. (2019, March). The Puzzle of the Unbalanced Mind. Psychology Today.
Nesse RM: The evolution of hope and despair. Social Research, 429-469, 1999.
Explaining depression: Neuroscience is not enough, evolution is essential, 2009
Why has natural selection left us so vulnerable to anxiety and mood disorders? Can J Psychiatry, 2011
Evolutionary psychology and mental health. 2015
A general ''Theory of Emotion'' is neither necessary nor possible, Emotion Review, 2014
Nesse Anorexia: A Perverse Effect of Trying to Control the Starvation Response BBS 2017
Nesse, Finch, Nunn: Evolution, Sleep, & Alzheimer's Disease, 2017
Nesse, RM: Evolutionary Psychology and Mental Health. Pages 903-937 in Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, Edited by David Buss, John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken , NJ, 2005. Best general overview. See the 2015 revision.
Nesse RM: An evolutionary perspective on psychiatry. Comprehensive Psychiatry 25:575-580, 1984 An early overview of what evolutionary biology provides for psychiatry.
An informal short overview of how negative feelings can be useful, with lovely illustrations
Articles on specific disorders
This textbook chapter is the best starting place for clinical professionals who treat depression
Nesse & Stein: Towards a genuinely medical model for psychiatric nosology, BMC Medicine, 2012
Nesse RM, Berridge K Psychoactive drug use in evolutionary perspective. Science, 277: 63-65, 1997.
Nesse RM: What is mood for? Psycholoquy 2: Issue 9.2, November 24, 1991.
An early statement about the utility of mood
An article on how evolution can help explain emotional disorders
Nesse RM Is depression an adaptation? Archives of General Psychiatry, 57: 14-20, 2000.
This is the classic statement, the widely cited first article published in the new millenium in The Archives of General Psychiatry
A good general statement of my ideas about depression
A general treatment of motivation and mood
If natural selection is so great, why are we so prone to anxiety and depression? The answer is here.
The most comprehensive statement of how evolutionary biology can help us to understand and treat mental disorders