Textbook of Evolutionary Psychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine


Book Description

This book is unique in taking an evolutionary perspective to understanding psychiatric and psychosomatic conditions. It explores how the human brain/mind has been shaped by natural and sexual selection and why adaptations to environmental conditions in our evolutionary past may not always work in our best interests.




Evolutionary Psychiatry


Book Description

Evolutionary psychiatry attempts to explain and examine the development and prevalence of psychiatric disorders through the lens of evolutionary and adaptationist theories. In this edited volume, leading international evolutionary scholars present a variety of Darwinian perspectives that will encourage readers to consider 'why' as well as 'how' mental disorders arise. Using insights from comparative animal evolution, ethology, anthropology, culture, philosophy and other humanities, evolutionary thinking helps us to re-evaluate psychiatric epidemiology, genetics, biochemistry and psychology. It seeks explanations for persistent heritable traits shaped by selection and other evolutionary processes, and reviews traits and disorders using phylogenetic history and insights from the neurosciences as well as the effects of the modern environment. By bridging the gap between social and biological approaches to psychiatry, and encouraging bringing the evolutionary perspective into mainstream psychiatry, this book will help to inspire new avenues of research into the causation and treatment of mental disorders.




Textbook of Evolutionary Psychiatry


Book Description

In the past couple of decades, studies investigating the genetic background of psychiatric disorders have mushroomed. Research into the brain mechanisms and regions of the brain involved in certain dysfunctions have greatly improved our knowledge of the relationship between brain pathology and psychopathology. By contrast, we know far less about 'why' certain individuals remain vulnerable to psychiatric disease at all, and whether they were selected by evolutionary forces or simply by-products of other species-specific characteristics. This comprehensive book presents a new integrative approach to understanding psychopathological conditions - an approach that embraces cognition, emotion, behaviour, and their nature-nurture interactions. Central to this approach is the introduction of human evolution into the psychiatric model - psychiatrists need to know why the human mind and brain evolved in the way it did. In three parts, the book presents a comprehensive account of human brain evolution in terms of physical features and function, showing how these relate to our current understanding of psychopathology. Accessibly written, the book shows how a consideration of evolutionary factors in psychiatry can improve our understanding and treatment of specific disorders such as suicidal behaviour, anorexia, and depression.




Evolutionary Psychology


Book Description

This book examines human psychology and behavior through the lens of modern evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary Psychology: The Ne w Science of the Mind, 5/e provides students with the conceptual tools of evolutionary psychology, and applies them to empirical research on the human mind. Content topics are logically arrayed, starting with challenges of survival, mating, parenting, and kinship; and then progressing to challenges of group living, including cooperation, aggression, sexual conflict, and status, prestige, and social hierarchies. Students gain a deep understanding of applying evolutionary psychology to their own lives and all the people they interact with.




Evolutionary Psychopathology


Book Description

Mental disorders arise from neural and psychological mechanisms that have been built and shaped by natural selection across our evolutionary history. Looking at psychopathology through the lens of evolution is the only way to understand the deeper nature of mental disorders and turn a mass of behavioral, genetic, and neurobiological findings into a coherent, theoretically grounded discipline. The rise of evolutionary psychopathology is part of an exciting scientific movement in psychology and medicine -- a movement that is fundamentally transforming the way we think about health and disease. Evolutionary Psychopathology takes steps toward a unified approach to psychopathology, using the concepts of life history theory -- a biological account of how individual differences in development, physiology and behavior arise from tradeoffs in survival and reproduction -- to build an integrative framework for mental disorders. This book reviews existing evolutionary models of specific conditions and connects them in a broader perspective, with the goal of explaining the large-scale patterns of risk and comorbidity that characterize psychopathology. Using the life history framework allows for a seamless integration of mental disorders with normative individual differences in personality and cognition, and offers new conceptual tools for the analysis of developmental, genetic, and neurobiological data. The concepts presented in Evolutionary Psychopathology are used to derive a new taxonomy of mental disorders, the Fast-Slow-Defense (FSD) model. The FSD model is the first classification system explicitly based on evolutionary concepts, a biologically grounded alternative to transdiagnostic models. The book reviews a wide range of common mental disorders, discusses their classification in the FSD model, and identifies functional subtypes within existing diagnostic categories.




Textbook of Biological Psychiatry


Book Description

A Textbook of Biological Psychiatry integrates the basic science concerning brain mechanisms of psychiatric disorders alongside surveys of present standard clinical treatment. Organized in a coherent and easy to follow structure, chapters expand across different levels of analysis, from basic mechanisms to clinical practice. This comprehensive reference provides an integrative treatment of the biochemistry of neurotransmission, behavioral pharmacology, and clinical aspects of psychiatric problems including depression, manic-depression, and mood disorders. Other chapters address the biological mechanisms and treatment of depression, anxiety, panic, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and addictions. The editor concludes with a perspective on the future of the field and prospects for understanding and effectively treating mood and anxiety disorders.







The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology


Book Description

The foundations of practice and the most recent discoveries intheintriguing newfield of evolutionary psychology Why is the mind designed the way it is? How does input from theenvironment interact with the mind to produce behavior? By takingaim at such questions, the science of evolutionary psychology hasemerged as a vibrant new discipline producing groundbreakinginsights. In The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology,leading contributors discuss the foundations of the field as wellas recent discoveries currently shaping this burgeoning area ofpsychology. Guided by an editorial board made up of such luminaries as LedaCosmides, John Tooby, Don Symons, Steve Pinker, Martin Daly, MargoWilson, and Helena Cronin, the text's chapters delve into acomprehensive range of topics, covering the full range of thediscipline: Foundations of evolutionary psychology Survival Mating Parenting and kinship Group living Interfaces with traditional disciplines of evolutionarypsychology And interfaces across disciplines. In addition to an in-depth survey of the theory and practice ofevolutionary psychology, the text also features an enlighteningdiscussion of this discipline in the context of the law, medicine,and culture. An Afterword by Richard Dawkins provides some finalthoughts from the renowned writer and exponent of evolutionarytheory. Designed to set the standard for handbooks in the field,The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology is an indispensablereference tool for every evolutionary psychologist and student.




Measuring Psychopathology


Book Description

Measuring Psychopathology describes the methods by which signs and symptoms of mental disorders are elicited, examined and evaluated. The content covers the development of standardised interviews, questionnaires and rating scales.




Evolutionary Psychiatry


Book Description

Challenging a medical model which has supplied few effective answers to long-standing conundrums, Evolutionary Psychiatry proposes a new conceptual framework for psychiatry based on Darwinian theory. Anthony Stevens and John Price argue that psychiatric symptoms are manifestations of ancient adaptive strategies which are no longer necessarily appropriate but which can best be understood and treated in an evolutionary and developmental context. They propose theories to account for the widespread existence of affective disorders, borderline states and schizophrenia, as well as offering solutions for puzzles such as sadomasochism and the function of dreams. This comprehensive introduction to the new science of Darwinian Psychiatry is readily accessible to both the specialist and non-specialist reader. It describes in detail the disorders and conditions commonly encountered in psychiatric practice and show how evolutionary theory can account for their biological origins and functional nature.