Evolving Psychiatry

What different explanatory frameworks can make sense of depression? And what are their respective impacts?Daniel Nettle is a behavioural scientist whose work bridges psychology, evolution, and public health. He a researcher in the Evolution and Social Cognition team at the Institut Jean Nicod, Paris as well as a Professor at Northumbria University. Much of his most recent research has examined how poverty, inequality, and social environments shape behaviour and mental health. He’s the author several books, including Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile and Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are, as well as a wide range of academic articles and research relating to evolutionary psychiatry, including on schizophrenia, early life stressors, depression and interpretation of different explanatory frameworks of mental disorder.This podcast is financially supported by the Human Ecology Group of the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich.

Evolutionary perspectives on ADHD are often talked about: Annie Swanepoel shares how they affect her practice as a psychiatrist, and what evolutionary perspectives in general mean for the field.Dr Annie Swanepoel is a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist in North East London NHS Foundation Trust and holds a PhD in Human Physiology. She has played a longstanding role in the evolutionary psychiatry special interest group of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, serving on the executive committee for many years, including being editor of the newsletter and finance officer. She has published multiple papers on evolution and ADHD.The paper mentioned in this episode can be found here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/irish-journal-of-psychological-medicine/article/abs/evolutionary-perspectives-on-adhd/59AD1CA265F79F7EF978178361BC8E17This podcast is financially supported by the Human Ecology Group of the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich.

Why do we get depressed? Is depression really functional? In this episode, Adam discusses an overarching hypothesis which captures many existing evolutionary hypotheses: that depression's original function is to disengage us from life.Dr Adam Hunt is a researcher in the emerging field of evolutionary psychiatry at the Leverhulme Center for Human Evolutionary Studies at the University of Cambridge. Since 2019 he has served on the executive committee of the Evolutionary Psychiatry Special Interest Group of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He also sits on the board of the International Society for Evolution, Medicine and Public Health. He is the founding chair of the Foundation for Evolution and Mental Health. His PhD thesis entitled ‘Evolving Evolutionary Psychiatry and Explaining Neurodiversity’ received Summa Cumme Laude from the University of Zurich in spring 2024.He has published multiple academic articles in journals such as Biological Reviews, Autism Research and Evolutionary Human Sciences on a range of topics, including how evolutionary psychiatry supports the concept of neurodiversity and how evolutionary theory explains individual differences in cognition and dissolves the distinction between psychopathology and personality. He has lectured and trained psychiatrists and psychotherapists in evolutionary psychiatry.This podcast is financially supported by the Human Ecology Group of the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich.

Why does low mood, and at extreme, depression, exist? What is its function? James Turner is a postdoctoral researcher at Umeå University. He completed his PhD in Philosophy in 2024 at the University of Sheffield; the title of his thesis was : Low mood: Evolution, Cognition and Disorder.He has a general research interest in cognitive science, evolutionary theory, and the philosophy of psychiatry. In particular, He is interested in the evolution of low mood, the nature of physical and psychological function and dysfunction, and recently he has been dabbling in the philosophy of AI.This podcast is financially supported by the Human Ecology Group of the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich.

New results show that clinicians respond positively to evolutionary explanations of anxiety. In this episode, Adam and Tom discuss some of the findings of their study "Clinicians' attitudes to evolutionary and genetic explanations for anxiety: a cluster-randomised study of stigmatisation". It is available to read here: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/4kwrb_v2Tom Carpenter is a psychiatrist registrar in training in the West of Scotland, and a clinical lecturer at the University of Glasgow. He is the trainee representative on the executive committee of the Evolutionary Psychiatry Special Interest Group of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.This podcast is financially supported by the Human Ecology Group of the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich.

Why dating apps can't last; defeating negative thinking; and exposure to sensible risk.Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair is a Clinical Psychologist and a Professor of Personality Psychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He is Editor-in-Chief of the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology and was the Head of the Department of Psychology at NTNU. Kennair is an elected member of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters and was appointed to the Norwegian Cabinet Committee on Women’s Health. His research interests are diverse, focusing on the effective treatment of anxiety and depressive disorders, as well as evolutionary psychology. He applies Sexual Strategies Theory to explore topics such as jealousy, regret, sexual harassment, mate preferences, and the use of dating apps. A topic close to his heart is the mystery of the evolution of mental disorder.This podcast is financially supported by the Human Ecology Group of the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich.

Social media is bad for mental health right? Well... it's more complicated than that. In this episode, we discuss the ways in which novel digital technologies can also improve mental health, and how an evolutionary perspective on tech helps illuminate its dual effects of harming and healing.Tanay Katiyar is a PhD student, co-supervised by Amy Orben and Nikhil Chaudhary, at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (CBU) and the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies at the University of Cambridge. Drawing on frameworks from cognitive science, evolutionary psychiatry and anthropology, he is currently investigating how our contemporary living conditions and digital environments both protect from and leave us vulnerable to mental health problems in novel ways. He studied economics as an undergraduate in India, and then did his masters in cognitive science at the ecole normale superieure in Paris. He is also a host of the Cognitations podcast, which is dedicated to cognitive science and interviews many renowned scholars across the psychological sciences.This podcast is financially supported by the Human Ecology Group of the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich.

Did mental disorders evolve to provide benefits to the community around us? Well, maybe, but these sorts of explanations could be criticised as naive 'group selection'. In this episode Adam goes into the nuance of understanding how evolution actually works in this common area of debate.Dr Adam Hunt is a researcher in the emerging field of evolutionary psychiatry at the Leverhulme Center for Human Evolutionary Studies at the University of Cambridge. Since 2019 he has served on the executive committee of the Evolutionary Psychiatry Special Interest Group of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He also sits on the board of the International Society for Evolution, Medicine and Public Health. His PhD thesis entitled ‘Evolving Evolutionary Psychiatry and Explaining Neurodiversity’ received Summa Cumme Laude from the University of Zurich in spring 2024.He has published multiple academic articles in journals such as Autism Research and Evolutionary Human Sciences on a range of topics, including how evolutionary psychiatry supports the concept of neurodiversity and how evolutionary theory explains individual differences in cognition and dissolves the distinction between psychopathology and personality. He has lectured and trained psychiatrists and psychotherapists in evolutionary psychiatry.This podcast is financially supported by the Human Ecology Group of the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich.

Why did the human species evolve autism? What about different forms of autism? How does an evolutionary perspective align with the neurodiversity movement? Dr Adam Hunt is a researcher in the emerging field of evolutionary psychiatry at the Leverhulme Center for Human Evolutionary Studies at the University of Cambridge. Since 2019 he has served on the executive committee of the Evolutionary Psychiatry Special Interest Group of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He also sits on the board of the International Society for Evolution, Medicine and Public Health. His PhD thesis entitled ‘Evolving Evolutionary Psychiatry and Explaining Neurodiversity’ received Summa Cumme Laude from the University of Zurich in spring 2024. He has published multiple academic articles in journals such as Autism Research and Evolutionary Human Sciences on a range of topics, including how evolutionary psychiatry supports the concept of neurodiversity and how evolutionary theory explains individual differences in cognition and dissolves the distinction between psychopathology and personality. He has lectured and trained psychiatrists and psychotherapists in evolutionary psychiatry. This podcast is financially supported by the Human Ecology Group of the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich.

Humans rely on each other. Mothers, in particular, need help raising children. In this episode we discuss Professor Alessandra Cassar's work seeking to understand how maternal depression relates to gaining social support. We also touch on where evolutionary perspectives may be useful in structuring society more widely. Alessandra Cassar is a professor of economics at the University of San Francisco. Through laboratory and field experiments across the world, her studies focus on the contributions of evolutionary processes to shaping human behavior. Her current research concentrates on the under-studied areas of female competitiveness; the consequences of conflict and disaster victimization for altruism, trust, religiosity, risk, and time preferences; and the role of social networks for economic outcomes.

Why have humans evolved tendencies for substance addiction? In this episode, Adam and Tom discuss the evolutionary explanations for these vulnerabilities. The discussion is based on their paper "Evolutionary perspectives on substance and behavioural addictions: Distinct and shared pathways to understanding, prediction and prevention". Dr Tom Carpenter is a resident doctor in Psychiatry based in NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde and an Honorary Clinical Lecturer at the University of Glasgow. He is also a member of the executive committee of the Evolutionary Psychiatry Special Interest Group of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh after initially studying Human Sciences at the University of Oxford, completing a Master’s degree in research in Animal Behaviour at Newcastle University, and having a brief career in marketing. He has worked in a specialist addictions service in Glasgow and currently works in an early intervention in psychosis service. He has current research and engagement projects around the usefulness and impact of evolutionary psychoeducation for mental health clinicians.

Social media, video games, gambling... why are some activities so rewarding that we become addicted? In this episode, we discuss the reason humans are susceptible to 'behavioural addictions', referencing our shared paper 'Evolutionary perspectives on substance and behavioural addictions: Distinct and shared pathways to understanding, prediction and prevention'. Dr. Giuseppe Pierpaolo Merola is an Italian psychiatrist and researcher currently practicing at San Donato Arezzo Hospital and serving as a Visiting Researcher at King's College London. His work focuses on genetics and evolutionary psychiatry. He is the author of the popular science book "Il paradosso della schizofrenia" and multiple scientific papers.

Depression is often linked to adversity: why would it reliably appear in such conditions? Ed Hagen has spent over forty years wondering about this question, and is one of the world's foremost researchers on evolutionary approaches to depression. We discuss depression in this interview. Ed Hagen is a Pofessor of Evolutionary Anthropology at Washington State University. Professor Hagen began his academic career with a BA in mathematics from UC Berkeley and initially worked in an organic polymer lab before discovering his passion for anthropology. This led him to pursue a Ph.D. in anthropology at UC Santa Barbara, where he graduated in 1999. Following his doctoral studies, he joined Peter Hammerstein’s group at the Institute for Theoretical Biology at Humboldt University in Berlin. Since 2007, Dr. Hagen has been a faculty member at Washington State University, where he directs the Bioanthropology Lab. Dr. Hagen’s research explores evolutionary medicine, particularly focusing on non-infectious diseases—a field where traditional medicine has seen limited breakthroughs. His studies encompass various aspects of mental health, examining conditions like depression, suicide, and self-harm through the lens of evolutionary signaling strategies. He has also explored the complex dynamics of tobacco use and human interactions with plant secondary compounds, child growth and development (stemming from his research on postpartum depression), and more recently, evolutionary models of leadership and knowledge specialization. To connect with Dr. Hagen’s ongoing work, check out his blog at grasshoppermouse.github.io or follow him on Twitter at @ed_hagen and on Mastodon at @edhagen@fediscience.org.

The past is invisible - how are we supposed to know the truth behind our evolutionary history? In this episode, Adam Hunt discusses the complexity of the reality behind our evolution, and the limits of science in telling these stories. Dr Adam Hunt is a postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge. He received his PhD in evolutionary biology and philosophy from the University of Zurich in March of 2024, for his dissertation entitled 'Evolving Evolutionary Psychiatry and Explaining Neurodiversity'. He has been researching evolutionary psychiatry for eight years, since completing a Masters in philosophy of science at the University of Bristol. He is on the executive committee of the Royal College of Psychiatrist's evolutionary psychiatry special interest group and the council of the International Society for Evolution, Medicine and Public Health.

In the Amazon rainforest, how would mental illness manifest? What is life in non-industrialised societies like? Camila Scaff discusses social life, loneliness, and her journey investigating mental health and disorder amongst the Tsimane of the Bolivian Amazon. Dr. Camila Scaff earned her PhD in Cognitive Sciences from the École Normale Supérieure - Paris Diderot University (now Université Paris Cité). She holds split-time postdoctoral research fellowships with the Human Ecology Group at the University of Zurich’s Institute of Evolutionary Medicine and the Language Acquisition Across Cultures group at the École Normale Supérieure’s Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistiques (LSCP) in Paris. Her research explores how socioecological environments shape human cognitive and linguistic variation.

Why does severe trauma lead to PTSD? This episode considers work on combat stress and PTSD symptoms in Turkana warriors of North West Kenya, and how it relates to evolutionary explanations of PTSD symptoms. Matt Zefferman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He uses mathematical models and ethnographic field research to understand human culture, cooperation, and conflict – especially in the contexts of political organization and war. He has also conducted ethnographic fieldwork with Turkana pastoralist warriors in northwest Kenya. They have a high degree of combat exposure – with about half of adult male mortality due to combat in cattle raids. Matt is interested in how Turkana organization for war has influenced their susceptibility to combat stress and moral injury. He has interviewed hundreds of warriors about their combat experiences, moral beliefs about warfare, combat stress symptoms, and moral injury. Before starting as an assistant professor at NPS Matt was a Donald R. Beall Defense Fellow in his department. Before that he was a postdoctoral research fellow at ASU’s Institute of Human Origins and a member of  the Adaptation, Behavior, Culture and Society research group in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change.  Before that, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis and, before that, earned his PhD at the University of California, Davis in the Cultural Evolution and Human Behavioral Ecology Labs. Matt is also a US Air Force veteran with six years of service as a civil engineering officer with deployments to the UAE and Afghanistan.

Evolutionary explanations of depression could change how we perceive the condition, and how depressed people perceive themselves. In this episode, clinical psychologist Hans Schroder discusses his experiences and research in providing functional explanations of depression to patients. Hans Schroder is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan (U-M) Medical School and a Psychology Faculty Associate at U-M. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Michigan State University in 2018 and completed his internship and two-year postdoctoral fellowship at McLean Hospital / Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts, followed by a 1-year postdoctoral fellowship at U-M in the Department of Psychiatry and the Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine. As a licensed clinical psychologist, Dr. Schroder’s primary role in Psychiatry is providing psychotherapy and exposure-based therapies to individuals and groups with anxiety and depressive disorders in the Adult Anxiety Clinic. His earlier research examined error-related brain activity using electroencephalogram (EEG) and its relation to anxiety and depression. His current research interests include understanding beliefs and messages about mental health (e.g., the “chemical imbalance” narrative) and their impacts on treatment expectations, decision-making and well-being. The goal of this research is to better equip patients and providers with messages that optimize motivation for improving mental health. You can follow Adam Hunt on Twitter/X @RealAdamHunt

Justin Garson is Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and a contributor for PsychologyToday.com and Aeon. He writes on the philosophy of madness, evolution of the mind, and purpose in nature. In this episode we discuss scientific concepts of dysfunction, the role of the paradigms framing psychiatry, and the possible benefits of evolutionary thinking about mental 'disorders'. Justin has two recently published books you should check out: Madness: A Philosophical Exploration (Oxford University Press, 2022) and The Biological Mind: A Philosophical Introduction, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2022). You can connect with Justin on Twitter @Justin_Garson You can connect with Adam on Twitter @RealAdamHunt

Joe Polimeni is a Canadian general psychiatrist and Associate Professor at the University of Manitoba who has conducted research in neuroscience, psychopharmacology and evolutionary psychiatry. His book, Shamans Among Us, outlines his hypothesis regarding the evolution of schizophrenia, which is the topic of this episode. You can purchase the book here: https://josephpolimeni.com/purchase.html You can follow Adam Hunt on Twitter/X @RealAdamHunt

Jerome Wakefield is a professor of social work in the Silver School of Social Work at New York University. Much of his work is in the history and philosophy of psychiatry. He is renowned in evolutionary psychiatry for his "harmful dysfunction" analysis of mental illness. We discuss our evolved human nature and how we can designate 'disorder' given our understanding of biological design, the pathologisation of normal sadness as depression, and the worth of evolutionary psychiatry to society. You can follow Adam Hunt on X/Twitter @RealAdamHunt