The crisis of psychiatry – insights and prospects from evolutionary theory–Article in World Psychiatry

The crisis of psychiatry – insights and prospects from evolutionary theory
By Martin Brune, Jay Belsky, Horacio Fabrega, Jay R. Feierman, Paul Gilbert, Kalman Glantz, Joseph Polimeni, John S. Price, Julio Sanjuan, Roger Sullivan, Alfonso Troisi, Daniel R. Wilson    In the Feb 2012 World Psychiatry Journal

Opening paragraph…
Darwin’s emphasis on natural selection has had a transformative
influence on how biological and medical sciences
are conceptualized and conducted. However, the relevance
of his ideas for the understanding of psychiatric conditions
is still under-appreciated. Modern understanding of disease
has required appreciation of the dialectical give and take between
environmental influences, life history theory imperatives,
human behavioral ecology, and characteristics of adaptive
processes at all levels of the individual. This has enabled
a better comprehension of metabolic disturbances, cancers,
auto-immune disease, inherited anemias, and vulnerability
to infectious disease (1). Here we propose that a contemporary
and scientifically satisfying understanding of psychiatric
conditions requires adopting a similar logic of inquiry, by
taking into consideration the influence of environmental
contingencies and natural selection in sculpting not just
brain based mechanisms and processes germane to clinical
neurosciences, but also diverse characteristics of behavior.

Open access, PDF available here  Brune et al-CrisisPsychiatryEvol-WPA-2012