Integrating Evolutionary, Cultural, and Computational Psychiatry: A Multilevel Systemic Approach

Abstract

This paper proposes an integrative perspective on evolutionary, cultural and computational approaches to psychiatry. These three approaches attempt to frame mental disorders as multiscale entities and offer modes of explanations and modeling strategies that can inform clinical practice. Although each of these perspectives involves systemic thinking, each is limited in its ability to address the complex developmental trajectories and larger social systemic interactions that lead to mental disorders. Inspired by computational modeling in theoretical biology, this paper aims to integrate the modes of explanation offered by evolutionary, cultural and computational psychiatry in a multilevel systemic perspective. We apply the resulting Evolutionary, Cultural and Computational (ECC) model to Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) to illustrate how this integrative approach can guide research and practice in psychiatry.

Integration and Causality in Enactive Approaches to Psychiatry

“…It may lead to what are sometimes observed in ASD, namely, “highly structured and regimented life routines that avoid novelty and the inherent unpredictability of typical social life” [( 94 ), p. 345]. Similar things can be said about what Constant et al [( 7 ), p. 7] call “practical causality” (or looping effects) in the medical or psychiatric context—that is, changes in behavior caused by virtue of being classified or labeled autistic. Classifying someone as autistic may in fact change expectations and behavior.…”

“…He also pursues an explanatory strategy in terms of causal relevance, appealing to new mechanist models ( 5 ), and Woodward's ( 6 ) interventionist view of causality. One version of the integration problem, then, is to understand how to adjudicate among multiple explanations or disciplines [see ( 7 ) for a recent attempt to address this problem].…”

Restoring the missing person to personalized medicine and precision psychiatry

“…In recent decades, a step toward integration has been achieved through the incorporation of models of cognitive processes into neurobiological research on the premise that these served to link biological vulnerability, social environment, and individual symptom expression ( Garety et al, 2007 ). More recent frameworks, such as the predictive processing or active inference approach developed in computational psychiatry research, offer avenues for deeper integration across neural and sociocultural levels of description ( Ramstead et al, 2016 ; Veissière et al, 2020 ; Constant et al, 2022 ). However, to date, these have not been elaborated in an integrative framework that includes individual phenomenology, self-understanding, and social context.…”

“…Many of the theoretical claims of 4E cognitive science can be operationalized in terms of current models of active inference in computational psychiatry ( Badcock et al, 2019 ; Hipólito and van Es, 2022 ). This allows us to build models of cognitive function and adaptation that include both the brain and the social world, through interactions with other people and institutions that present cultural affordances ( Ramstead et al, 2016 ; Kirmayer and Ramstead, 2017 ; Veissière et al, 2020 ; Tison and Poirier, 2021 ; Constant et al, 2022 ).…”

The Inventory of Nonordinary Experiences (INOE): Evidence of Validity in the United States and India

“…Researchers increasingly recognize that the mind and culture interact at many levels to constitute our lived experience (1)(2)(3)), yet we know relatively little about the extent to which culture shapes the way people appraise their experiences and the likelihood that a given experience will be reported. Cultural concepts are built into reports of experience and in many cases the categories lay people and researchers use to classify them.…”