The evolutionary approach to depression is the attempt of evolutionary psychologists to use the theory of evolution to explain the problem of mood disorders. Depression is generally regarded as dysfunction, but is much more common than schizophrenia or autism, and its prevalence does not increase with age such as dementia and other organic dysfunction. Some researchers have suspected that this disorder may have evolutionary roots, in the same way as others suggest evolutionary contributions to schizophrenia, sickle cell anemia and other disorders. Psychology and psychiatry in general do not use evolutionary explanations for behavior, and the proposed explanation for the evolution of depression remains controversial.
Video Evolutionary approaches to depression
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Severe depression (also called "major depressive disorder", "clinical depression" or "depression") is a major cause of disability worldwide, and in 2000 was the fourth largest contributor to the global burden of disease (measured in DALY); it is also an important risk factor for suicide. Understandably, then, that clinical depression is considered pathology - a major dysfunction of the brain.
In many cases, the rate of organ dysfunction increases with age, with low rates in adolescents and young adults, and the highest rate in the elderly. These patterns are consistent with the theory of the evolution of aging which places that the selection of dysfunctional characteristics decreases with age (since there is a decreased chance of survival for later ages).
In contrast to these patterns, the prevalence of clinical depression is high in all age categories, including healthy adolescents and young adults. In one study of the US population, for example, the 12-month prevalence for major depressive episodes was the highest in the youngest age category (15 to 24 years). The high prevalence of depression is also an outlier when compared to the prevalence of major mental retardation, autism, and schizophrenia, all with a prevalence rate of about one-tenth of depression, or less.
The general incidence and perseverance of such properties as clinical depression with such negative effects early in life is difficult to explain. (The rate of infectious diseases is high in young people, of course, but clinical depression is not considered to be caused by infection.) Evolutionary psychology and its application in the treatment of evolution show how mental behaviors and conditions, including apparently dangerous situations such as depression Perhaps useful adaptations of ancestors human beings who improve the fitness of their individual or family. It has been argued, for example, that Abraham Lincoln's lifelong depression is a source of insight and strength. Some even suggest that "we are not designed to have happiness as our natural innate" and hence the state of depression is the norm of evolution.
The following hypothesis tries to identify the benefits of depression that exceed clear costs.
Such hypotheses do not always conflict with each other and can explain the various aspects, causes, and symptoms of depression.
Maps Evolutionary approaches to depression
Hypothesis of psychic pain
One reason depression is considered pathology is that it causes so much pain and psychic sadness. However, physical pain is also very difficult, but it has evolved functions: to inform the organism that it is suffering damage, to motivate to withdraw from sources of damage, and learn to avoid the circumstances that cause such damage in the future.. Sadness is also sad, but it is widely believed to be an evolving adaptation. In fact, perhaps the most influential evolutionary view is that most cases of depression are just cases of intense grief in response to adversity, such as the loss of a loved one.
According to the hypothesis of psychic pain, depression is analogous to physical pain in that it tells the sufferer that the current state, such as the loss of a friend, impose a threat to biological fitness. This motivates the sufferer to stop activities that lead to costly situations, if possible, and that causes him to learn to avoid similar circumstances in the future. Proponents of this view tend to focus on low moods, and consider clinical depression as dysfunctional extremes of low mood - and not as a set of unique characteristics that physiologically distances from ordinary depression mood.
Along with the absence of fun, other real changes include psychomotor retardation, disturbed sleeping and eating patterns, loss of sex drive and motivation - all of which are also characteristic of the body's reaction to actual physical pain. In people with depression there is an increase in activity in the cortical region involved with pain perception, such as the anterior cingulate cortex and the left prefrontal cortex. This activity allows the cortex to realize abstract negative thinking as a real physical stressor throughout the brain.
Model blackout behavior
The behavioral death model states that if an organism faces more risks or expenses than the rewards of activity, the best evolutionary strategy may withdraw from them. This model proposes that emotional pain, such as physical pain, serves a useful adaptive purpose. Negative emotions such as disappointment, sadness, sadness, fear, anxiety, anger, and guilt are described as "a developing strategy that allows the identification and avoidance of specific problems, especially in the social domain." Depression is characteristically associated with anhedonia and lack of energy, and those who experience it are risk aversive and feel a more negative and pessimistic outcome as they focus on preventing further losses. Although the model views depression as an adaptive response, it does not indicate that it is favorable by current community standards; but it shows that many approaches to depression treat symptoms rather than causes, and the underlying social problems need to be addressed.
The phenomenon linked to the behavioral shutdown model is the learned helplessness. In animal subjects, loss of control or predictability in the subject experience results in conditions similar to clinical depression in humans. That is, if uncontrolled and unstoppable stress is repeated long enough, the subject of the mouse will adopt learned helplessness, which shares a number of behavioral and psychological features with human depression. The subject will not attempt to address the problem, even when placed in a stress-free novel environment. If their scarce efforts in dealing have proved successful in new environments, long-lasting cognitive blocks prevent them from observing their actions as useful and their coping strategies do not last long. From an evolutionary standpoint, learned helplessness also allows long-term energy conservation if people find themselves in a difficulty that is beyond their control, such as illness or drought. However, for today's humans whose depression resembles learned helplessness, this phenomenon usually manifests as a loss of motivation and distortion from one uncontrollable aspect of a person's life seen as representative of all aspects of their lives - suggesting a mismatch between the main and modern causes. manifestation.
The hypothesis of analytical formula
This hypothesis shows that depression is an adaptation that causes the affected individual to concentrate his attention and focus on complex issues to analyze and resolve.
One way depression increases the individual's focus on a problem is by encouraging reflection. Depression activates the left ventralateral prefrontal cortex, which increases attention control and retains information related to problems in "active, accessible" states called "working memory", or WM. As a result, depressed individuals have been proven to reflect, reflecting the reasons for their current problems. The feelings of regret associated with depression also cause individuals to reflect and analyze past events to determine why they occur and how they can be prevented.
Likewise, the ruminative trend itself, some cognitive psychologists argue, increases the likelihood of depression.
Another way depression increases the ability of an individual to concentrate on a problem is by reducing the distraction of the problem. For example, anhedonia, which is often associated with depression, reduces the desire of individuals to participate in activities that provide short-term rewards, and vice versa, allowing individuals to concentrate on long-term goals. In addition, "psychomotor changes", such as loneliness, decreased appetite, and insomnia also reduce interference. For example, insomnia allows a conscious analysis of the issues to be maintained by preventing sleep from interfering with the process. Likewise, loneliness, lack of physical activity, and lack of appetite, all eliminate sources of disturbance, such as social interaction, environmental navigation, and "oral activity", which interfere with stimuli for processing.
Possible depression as an unregulated adaptation
Depression, especially in the modern context, may not always be adaptive. The ability to feel pain and depression, is an adaptive defense mechanism, but when they are "too easily triggered, too strong, or long-lasting", they can become "disorganized". In such cases, defense mechanisms can also be diseases, such as "chronic pain or dehydration from diarrhea". Depression, which may be a similar defense mechanism, may have become irregular as well.
Thus, unlike other evolutionary theories this one sees depression as being maladaptive to extremes of something useful in smaller quantities. In particular, one theory focuses on the neuroticism of the personality trait. The low number of neuroticism can improve a person's fitness through various processes, but too much can reduce fitness with, for example, recurrent depression. Thus, evolution will choose for the optimal amount and most people will have neuroticism near this amount. However, genetic variations continue to occur, and some people will have high neuroticism that increases the risk of depression.
Ranking theory
Ranking theory is the hypothesis that, if an individual engages in a long struggle for dominance in a social group and is clearly defeated, then depression causes the individual to retreat and accept the obedient role. Thus, the individual is protected from unnecessary harm. In this way, depression helps to maintain a social hierarchy. This theory is a special case of a more general theory derived from the hypothesis of psychic pain: that the cognitive response that generates modern depression evolves as a mechanism that allows people to judge whether they are pursuing objectives that can not be achieved, and if they are, to motivate them to stop.
Hypothesis of social risk
This hypothesis is similar to the social rank hypothesis but rather focuses on the importance of avoiding exclusion from social groups, rather than direct domination contests. The benefits of fitness forming a bond of cooperation with others have long been recognized - during the Pleistocene period, for example, social bonding is vital to finding food and finding protection from predators.
Thus, depression is seen as representing an adaptive response, avoiding the risk of exclusionary threats from social relationships that will have an important impact on the survival and reproductive success of our ancestors. Several lines of evidence on the mechanism and phenomenology of depression suggest that mild to moderate (or "normative" depression) maintains individual inclusion in the main social context through three intersecting features: cognitive sensitivity to social and situational risk (eg, "depression of realism"); it inhibits confident and competitive behavior that tends to put individuals at further risk from conflicts or exceptions (as indicated by symptoms such as low self-esteem and social withdrawal); and it generates signaling behaviors directed at significant others to gain more of their support (eg, so-called "shouting for help"). According to this view, the case of severe depression captured by a clinical diagnosis reflects the maladaptive, dysregulated mechanism, which is partly due to the uncertainty and competitiveness of the modernized globalized world.
Honest signaling theory â € <â € <
Another reason depression is considered pathology is that the main symptoms, such as losing interest in almost all activities, are very expensive for the sufferer. Biologists and economists have proposed, however, that signals with inherent costs can credibly signal information when there is a conflict of interest. After serious negative life events, such as those that have caused depression (eg, death, divorce), signals of "cheap" needs, such as crying, may not be believed when a social partner has a conflict of interest. The symptoms of severe depression, such as losing interest in almost all activity and suicide, are inherently expensive, but, as required by costing signaling theories, the costs vary for individuals in different states. For individuals who do not really need, the cost of severe depression is very high because it threatens the flow of fitness benefits. For individuals who really need, however, the cost of depression fitness is low weight, because individuals do not generate a lot of fitness benefits. So, just an individual who really needs it can suffer from severe depression. Therefore, major depression serves as a signal of honest need or reliability.
For example, individuals who suffer severe losses such as partner death often need help and help from others. People who have little conflict with their social partners are predicted to experience sadness - a way, in part, to require needs to others. People who have multiple conflicts with their social partners, on the other hand, are predicted to be depressed - some way, in part, to credibly signals to others who may be skeptical that the need is genuine.
Bargaining theory
Depression is not only expensive for the sufferer, but it also weighs on the family, friends, and society significantly - but other reasons are considered pathological. But if people with depression have real needs but are not fulfilled, they may have to provide incentives to others to meet those needs.
The theory of bargaining depression is similar to the honest signals, niche changes, and social navigation theories of depression described below. This refers to the theories of labor strikes developed by economists to essentially add an additional element to the theory of honest signaling: The compatibility of social partners is generally correlated. When a wife suffers from depression and reduces her inheritance investments, for example, her husband's fitness is also at risk. Thus, not only are major depressive symptoms functioning as signals of expensive needs and therefore honest, they also force social partners who are reluctant to respond to those needs to prevent their fitness from diminishing.
Social navigation or niche change hypothesis proposes that depression is a social navigation adaptation of a last resort, designed specifically to help individuals overcome complex and expensive contractual constraints in their social niche. The hypothesis combines analytical formulas and bargaining hypotheses and suggests that depression, operationally defined as a combination of prolonged anhedonia and psychomotor retardation or agitation, provides a focused perspective and is conscious of socially imposed barriers that impede one's pursuit of a major fitness improvement project. Simultaneously, publicly displayed symptoms, which reduce the depressive ability to perform basic life activities, serve as a signal of social need; the cost of a signal for depressive states its honesty. Finally, for social partners who find it uneconomic to respond favorably to an honest need signal, the same depressive symptoms also have the potential to squeeze the relevant concessions and compromises. Extravenous Strength Depression stems from the fact that it inhibits the flow of goods and services as it is hoped by partners of depression under the socioeconomic arrangements of the status quo.
Thus, depression can be a very useful social adaptation in motivating various social partners, at the same time, to help depressives initiate major changes in fitness improvement in their socio-economic life. There are varied circumstances in which this may be necessary in human social life, ranging from social rank or key social allies that make the current social niche uneconomical to have a new set of creative ideas about how to make a livelihood that begs for a new niche. The social navigation hypothesis emphasizes that one can be entangled in a matrix of excessive social exchange contracts, and that this situation sometimes requires radical contractual upheaval that lies beyond conventional negotiating methods. Regarding the treatment of depression, this hypothesis questions any assumption by doctors that the typical causes of depression are related to maladaptive misguided thinking or other pure endogenous sources. The social navigation hypothesis calls for analysis for depressive talent and dreams, identification of relevant social constraints (especially those with widespread non-point sources in social network depression), and social problem-solving therapy designed to relax. these limitations are sufficient to allow depressives to move forward with their lives under a set of better social contracts. This theory has been the subject of criticism.
Infection prevention
It has been hypothesized that depression is an evolutionary adaptation because it helps prevent infection both in affected individuals and their relatives.
First, related symptoms of depression, such as inactivity and lethargy, encourage affected individuals to rest. Energy conserved through these methods is very important, because the activation of immunity to infection is relatively expensive; should there be, for example, a 10% increase in metabolic activity even for 1? changes in body temperature. Therefore, depression allows one to conserve and allocate energy to the immune system more efficiently.
Depression further prevents infection by minimizing social interactions and activities that can lead to infection exchange. For example, the loss of interest makes people reluctant to engage in sexual activity, which, in turn, prevents the exchange of sexually transmitted diseases. Similarly, depressed mothers can interact less with their children, reducing the likelihood of mothers infecting their relatives. Finally, a lack of appetite associated with depression can also reduce the exposure of parasites that food takes.
However, it should also be noted that chronic disease itself may be involved in causing depression. In animal models, excessive reactions of the immune system, in response to chronic disease strains, result in increased production of cytokines (various groups of hormonal regulators and signal molecules). Cytokines interact with the neurotransmitter system - especially norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin, and induce depressive characteristics. The onset of depression can help a person recover from his illness by allowing them to live a safer, safer and more energetic lifestyle. Overproduction of these cytokines, beyond the optimal level due to repeated demands to deal with chronic illness, can lead to clinical depression and its accompanying behavioral manifestations that encourage extreme energy reservations.
The third ventricle hypothesis
The third ventricular hypothesis of depression suggests that behavioral clusters associated with depression (posture bending, avoiding eye contact, reducing appetite for food and sex plus social withdrawal and sleep disturbances) serve to reduce stimuli that stimulate individual attacks in the context of unfriendly social environments. It further proposes that this response is mediated by an acute release of an unknown inflammatory agent (possibly cytokines) into the third ventricular space. To support this suggestion, imaging studies reveal that the third ventricle is enlarged in depressive, which indicates damage due to decreased volume in adjacent structures.
Reception
Clinical and psychiatric psychology is historically relatively isolated from the field of evolutionary psychology. Some psychiatrists have raised concerns that evolutionary psychologists seek to explain hidden adaptive benefits without involving the rigorous empirical testing required to support such claims. Despite strong research to show genetic associations with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, there is a significant debate in clinical psychology about the relative influence and role of mediating cultural or environmental factors. For example, epidemiological studies suggest that different cultural groups may have different rates of diagnosis, symptomatology, and expression of mental illness. There is also an increase in recognition of cultural-bound disorders, which can be seen as arguments for the psychological adaptation of the environment versus genetic. While certain mental disorders may have psychological features that can be described as 'adaptive' on an evolutionary scale, this disorder causes individuals suffering significant emotional and psychological disorders and negatively affects the stability of interpersonal relations and daily adaptive function.
See also
- An evolutionary approach to postpartum depression
General:
- Evolutionary psychology
- The drug of evolution
Videos
- TED Talk: Can Depression Be Good for You?
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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