Marco Del Giudice
University of New Mexico, USA
Book Recommendations:
Recommended by Marco Del Giudice
“With a carefully thought-out sequence of chapters and an enviable roster of authors, this book is a superb invitation to evolutionary psychiatry for both researchers and practitioners in mental health. Readers will find a solid, concise introduction to the basic concepts; important but otherwise hard-to-find information (for example about mental illness in hunter-gatherers); and a range of thought-provoking hypotheses about the origins of specific conditions. As noted by the editors, this book exemplifies the power of evolutionary theory as a framework for ‘asking the right questions’; even better, it shows how an evolutionary approach can foster true interdisciplinarity, and permit wide-ranging theoretical exploration while remaining firmly grounded in biological and psychological reality.” (from Amazon)
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.