7. Mental Health

As we’ve learned, the brain is made of adaptive mechanisms that on average give us the best chance at survival and reproduction. Of course, there are always things that can go wrong. There could be a mistake in an individual design, called a genetic mutation, or environmental damage, for example, a concussion to the brain. The mechanism could be placed in a context it was not designed for, such as an environment of highly processed foods. It could fail to activate, for example, by not experiencing fear about standing on a slippery mountain edge, or activate under the wrong circumstances, in the case of romantic feelings toward a sibling. Or it could be unable to coordinate well with other circuits, such as thinking about your next meal in the face of a predatory attack. Any of these could result in emotional, behavioral, or cognitive disturbance. 

Keep in mind that emotions are intended as guides on the trail to fitness, not end states in themselves. Distress alone does not necessarily indicate dysfunction; in fact, it could be a sign that the mechanism is working exactly as intended. (We’ll see this soon in reference to depression and anxiety.) Undesirable social behavior is also not necessarily dysfunctional, for example, a psychopath is clearly acting in his best interest. Differentiating whether the emotional, behavioral, or cognitive disturbance is due to mechanism function or failure is significant in terms of treatment outcomes, yet often ignored by conventional assessments. Furthermore, the definition of disorders assumes distinct categories—you meet the criteria or you don’t—which may be practical but incorrect. Behavioral or emotional responses are on a continuum; at no point do they switch from normal to abnormal. 

Having personality traits on the far ends of the bell curve is part of normal variation, not mechanism failure. It may however, cause significant distress because it distorts reality and leads to poor decision-making. For example, someone who is extremely conscientious continuously overestimates the worst-case scenario and may be anxious about things that are unlikely to happen. Having a highly reactive nervous system is not a disorder; it’s simply a variation on the dimension of emotional stability. Someone with too little anxiety is more likely to suffer harm by failing to anticipate danger.

The closer you look at so-called disorders, the more you see personality at the core. For example, borderline personality disorder is essentially low agreeableness and high neuroticism; the manipulation tactics characteristic of such individuals is a solid resource acquisition technique. Narcissists are extremely disagreeable, and that’s also quite an effective strategy with low cost to the individual. High consciousness and neuroticism generally support obsessive-compulsive disorder as well as anorexia and other forms of anxiety. Psychosis strongly correlates with neuroticism and high openness—if you are a bit unstable and believe that anything is possible, you might see aliens! There are disorders such as schizophrenia or bipolar illness that are heritable but show no obvious advantage. Here it is possible we are looking at actual mutations, perhaps recurring independently, or persisting because the genes involved carry other advantages. 

Depression is a complex phenomenon to consider. From an evolutionary perspective, it’s a signaling mechanism that tells the system when it’s time to stop investing in a particular strategy. Unrealistic expectations lead to energy expenditure in pursuit of unreachable goals. For example, pursuing an unattainable romantic partner is not productive — depression sets in to curb behaviors with a low chance of success. Dissatisfaction with a dead-end job — depression prevents unnecessary output. Depression puts the brakes on motivation. In most cases the brain is signaling that something is wrong and that you should not pursue the current situation. 

There are other functions for the state of depression as well. It can signal submission, a plea for safety in the face of a threat. Playing the victim often generates sympathy, leading friends and family to provide resources. From this perspective it becomes an outsourcing and energy conservation strategy. Depression is also a tool for prioritization, helping us establish a value system so we know how to allocate our efforts. Think about the depression that arises from grief. A mother who loses a child needs to feel the immensity of this loss to show her how important it is to try to prevent it from happening again. The same is true of any loss. Depression tells us how much things cost or what their worth is. Those with depression are prone to rumination because the system is designed to think and analyze its way to a solution. Unpleasant feelings can generate creativity. 

Doug Lisle considers depression as failure feedback from a major life domain. In human history, the important relationships are with romantic partners, friends and family, and trading partners (work). The problem can usually be located within one or more of these areas. Unhappiness is often unrewarded energy, unexpected failure, or not living up to our competitive potential. Lisle also asks whether a problem would have existed during hunter-gatherer times (the environment we are designed for), and if the answer is no, such as for drugs or obesity, then it’s the environment that needs to change. 

The bottom line is that when something is wrong, it’s crucial that we experience distress and continue experiencing it until we diagnose and address the problem. Add personality variance to the equation, and you’re looking at a difficult situation, but usually not a disorder. 

Because of this, medicating depression or various other unpleasant states does not make a lot of sense. Indeed, science does not strongly support the belief that distress is due to a neurochemical imbalance. (Pharmaceutical companies, however, do strongly support it.) Taking substances the brain was not designed to handle can disrupt the homeostatic mechanisms. For example, flooding the brain with serotonin will initially cause a positive response, but the brain quickly fights to compensate, shutting down its own productions in response. Masking what’s wrong will usually cause it to present differently. More or different medication is continually necessary to reach the same equilibrium. The lines between a prescribed medication, a controlled substance, and an illegal one indicate the severity but not the therapeutic nature of its effect. Few of them are corrective or stabilizing; instead, they cause the brain to lose the ability to self-regulate. However, as with everything, we must take into account the cost-benefit analysis—some conditions are undoubtedly better off medicated. 

Evolutionary psychology has fascinating perspectives on topics such as suicide, self-injury, and crying. Suicide is not conducive to survival, but remember that the end goal is gene propagation. Under certain conditions the system may decide that recovery is not possible or not worth it, and that it is a burden in this state. In the ancestral environment, suicide meant freeing up your share of resources to relatives who had a greater chance of passing on your genetic material. In some cases there is also a complex interplay of status within the family or village. 

Self-injury is not a modern concept. It has always been a signal that you are in trouble and need resources from others. Crying is also a resource acquisition strategy, specifically an attempt to activate the parenting circuit in others through signaling helplessness and submission. The victim mentality is a powerful tool; it implies that you think people owe you something. The more others can do for you, the more energy you will save. (How do you think this fits in with today’s woke mentality?) To conclude, one of my favorite evolutionary explanations is that a reason people are more likely to become depressed in the winter is because they are better at conserving calories in this state; there was not much to eat in the winter, so this was advantageous.

In my opinion, in no other context does evolutionary psychology have greater practical application than to the one of mental health. Understanding both the proximate and the ultimate cause, or the how and the why, leads to a more complete knowledge from which specific and effective measures can be taken to increase well-being. In the next section I’ll place evolutionary psychology within the broader context of psychology and provide further resources. 

*The information in this section is primarily from Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind by David Buss, Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker, and various publications by Doug Lisle