Evolutionary Psychiatry
Why do mental disorders persist? Evolutionary foundations for psychiatry. 2022 Chapter in Evolutionary Psychiatry
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 (1984) An evolutionary perspective on psychiatry. (Many of my ideas about evolutionary psychiatry were published a decade before Why We Get Sick, including 4 questions, panic, mood, obesity, anorexia and premature ejaculation)
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
Nesse RM: What Darwinian medicine offers psychiatry. Evolutionary Medicine, W. R. Trevathan, J. J. McKenna and E. O. Smith. New York, Oxford University Press, 1999.
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