Disordered doctors or rational rats? Testing adaptationist and disorder hypotheses for melancholic depression and their relevance for clinical psychology

Andrews, Paul W.; Maslej, Marta M.; Thomson, J. Anderson; Hollon, Steven D.

doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2020.101927

Cited by 15 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 166 publications

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“…As we have argued in detail elsewhere, the classic description of melancholic depression exhibits a high degree of order and coordination for promoting Type 2 avoidant learning in response to serious failures or mistakes (21). By "avoidant learning" we mean that melancholia is an emotional response to serious missteps, and that it promotes a learning style whose function is to avoid similar events in the future.…”

Section: Question 2: What Is the Evidence That Melancholia Is An Adaptation?mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…After she described concerns that her son was stealing things in school and that her husband may be having an affair, both of which she attributed to her failure (as a mother and as a wife), Beck started to describe the cognitive model (that her thoughts might be in error) and she slapped her head and said, "So even my thoughts are no good!" As we describe in greater detail in our treatise on "Disordered Doctors or Rational Rats" it is likely preferable to describe depression as a normal (if unpleasant) evolved adaptation in a manner that validates the patient's emotional experience (21). It is possible to differentiate between beliefs that may not serve the patient well and the emotions that they generate, and it is axiomatic to say something along the line of "if you think you are to blame for your son's stealing or your husband's (suspected) infidelities, how could you not feel sad?"…”

Section: Question 7: Stigmatize Vs Validate?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Demonstrating that a trait such as melancholia is an adaptation is an onerous burden, and we refer readers to our other papers for more thorough treatments ( 21 , 32 , 33 ). Natural selection is the only known force in nature capable of producing highly organized and coordinated traits, and the only workable explanation for the architecture of the brain ( 34 , 35 ).…”

Section: Question 2: What Is the Evidence That Melancholia Is An Adaptation?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sadness, which is a crucial symptom of melancholia, is well-known to promote a Type 2 processing style ( 16 , 38 ). Many other symptoms of melancholia can be non-randomly organized around the time-consuming, attentionally-demanding, energetically expensive nature of Type 2 thinking ( 21 ). For instance, one will be unable to effectively engage in Type 2 processing if one is continuously distracted by thoughts of food or sex, so the symptom of anhedonia may help one engage in Type 2 processing without interruption.…”

Section: Question 2: What Is the Evidence That Melancholia Is An Adaptation?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To illustrate how CBT may work within the context of the ARH, we raise nine questions likely to be of interest to clinicians, and we discuss how our evolutionary approach provides insight into each. We have addressed these questions in greater detail elsewhere, and we refer interested readers to our previous articles for more in-depth considerations ( 16 , 17 , 21 , 22 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Depression From an Evolutionary Perspective

2021

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Evolutionary medicine attempts to solve a problem with which traditional medicine has struggled historically; how do we distinguish between diseased states and “healthy” responses to disease states? Fever and diarrhea represent classic examples of evolved adaptations that increase the likelihood of survival in response to the presence of pathogens in the body. Whereas, the severe mental disorders like psychotic mania or the schizophrenias may involve true “disease” states best treated pharmacologically, most non-psychotic “disorders” that revolve around negative affects like depression or anxiety are likely adaptations that evolved to serve a function that increased inclusive fitness in our ancestral past. What this likely means is that the proximal mechanisms underlying the non-psychotic “disorders” are “species typical” and neither diseases nor disorders. Rather, they are coordinated “whole body” responses that prepare the individual to respond in a maximally functional fashion to the variety of different challenges that our ancestors faced. A case can be made that depression evolved to facilitate a deliberate cognitive style (rumination) in response to complex (often social) problems. What this further suggests is that those interventions that best facilitate the functions that those adaptations evolved to serve (such as rumination) are likely to be preferred over those like medications that simply anesthetize the distress. We consider the mechanisms that evolved to generate depression and the processes utilized in cognitive behavior therapy to facilitate those functions from an adaptationist evolutionary perspective.

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Section: Question 2: What Is the Evidence That Melancholia Is An Adaptation?mentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Question 7: Stigmatize Vs Validate?mentioning

confidence: 99%