Coping with Depression
‘One of the liveliest discussions today concerns the influence of our evolutionary past on our present-day biology and behavior. An appreciation of the evolutionary perspective on depression can help those who are acutely suffering.
Evolutionary psychology describes how an ancestral environment different from the one we face today shaped the structure and function of our brains. As a result, we have internalized aspects of our ancestral environment that may be ill suited to life today.
What do we make of this mismatch? There is debate about the nature of depression. Is it, as conventional medicine thinks, purely an illness? Or, as evolutionary psychology sees it, is it an evolved mechanism of distress telling us to hibernate, escape or change something? In all likelihood, it is both. It is a complex condition.’
Read more at Coping with Depression
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