Keywords
Citation
(2008), "How Sadness Survived - The Evolutionary Basis of Depression", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 21 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijhcqa.2008.06221fae.002
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2008, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
How Sadness Survived - The Evolutionary Basis of Depression
Article Type: Recent publications From: International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Volume 21, Issue 6
Paul KeedwellRadcliffe Publishing2008ISBN-10 1 84619 013 4ISBN-13 9781846190131
Keywords: , Disease management, Mental health care, Ill health prevention multifaceted
Is depression a disease, a medical disorder suffered by humans for millennia, or is it a modern western malaise? Actually, neither perspective is helpful in trying to get to grips with this uniquely disabling but intriguing state of mind. The truth is that depression is multifaceted: it can lead to great insights and achievements, as well as great tragedies.
This book is a critical overview of ideas about depression, some new, some old, which fall under the discipline of “evolutionary psychology.” Why should a condition causing so much pain and disability occur so commonly? Rather than being a defect, is depression a part of what it means to be human? Do most types of depression represent an adaptation – an evolved mechanism which improved the survival and reproductive value of humans in our ancestral environment? Has depression been selected? Could it still be useful to us today?
How Sadness Survived spans philosophy, history, anthropology, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and ethology. Its positive, controversial and intriguing assertion is that depression may confer long-term benefits to the sufferer. Its conclusions have important implications for how we should prevent or treat an increasingly common condition, and how we might view the condition in a more constructive way.
Contents:
- •
Genes, disease and depression: busting myths.
- •
Some important assumptions about depression.
- •
The war of depression: an ancient human condition or a modern malaise?
- •
Living on a boat.
- •
Why weepest thou?
- •
Is depression universal?
- •
Depression’s place in the animal kingdom.
- •
Adaptation or fluff?
- •
What has depression ever done for us?
- •
Putting on the brakes.
- •
Taking stock (the vision quest).
- •
Beneficial by-products.
- •
Treating depression: new perspectives.
- •
The loss of depression’s adaptive power?
- •
Should we treat depression?