Evolving Psychiatry

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.

Randolph Nesse, a pioneer in evolutionary medicine and co-author of 'Why We Get Sick', shares insights on the origins of evolutionary psychiatry. He highlights the paradox of human vulnerability to diseases despite natural selection. Nesse discusses his formative experiences and the evolution of psychiatric practices, emphasizing collaboration in research. He contrasts US and UK psychiatric practices, noting the challenges of quick prescriptions in America. The conversation dives into integrating evolutionary perspectives in mental health, urging a more comprehensive understanding of emotions.

Stories abound in evolutionary psychology and psychiatry. How do we test them? In this third and final episode in this special series, Adam Hunt presents a way to standardise evolutionary hypothesis testing to make it more rigorous, reliable and systematic.The article is available, open access, here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/brv.70010A summary blog post can be found here: https://www.adamhunt.info/post/the-dcide-framework-published-in-biological-reviewsDr 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.

Trying to explain disorders as functional is tempting, but often misses a critical point: sometimes it is not the disorder itself which is functional, but it is occurring as a by-product of a different adaptive system. In this second part of this special three part series, Adam Hunt explains this common confusion and the steps we can take to solve it.The article which this episode is based on is available, open access, here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/brv.70010A summary blog post can be found here: https://www.adamhunt.info/post/the-dcide-framework-published-in-biological-reviewsDr 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.

Evolution has already happened, and we don't have a time machine: how can we test hypotheses about that process? This is a criticism raised since Darwin's time. In this special three part series, Adam Hunt presents his article which aims to make progress on this scientific methodology by providing an improved framework for evolutionary inference. This episode kicks off by giving the history of the problem.The article which this episode is based on is available, open access, here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/brv.70010A summary blog post can be found here: https://www.adamhunt.info/post/the-dcide-framework-published-in-biological-reviewsDr 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.

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.