Randolph M. Nesse, Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

Abstract

The modern world, it seems, needs all the psychiatric help it can muster. In Europe, 38% of the population suffers from at least one mental disorder annually [1]. This is similar to the 35% of global college students who report having a mental disorder [2]. In America, >70 000 people died from drug overdoses in 2017 [3]—the latest year for which reliable statistics are available—and nearly 50 000 more died from suicide [4]. These numbers do not include an estimated 88 000 deaths from alcohol abuse or nearly 500 000 more attributed to cigarette smoking. Against all evolutionary logic, we seem to be working hard to do ourselves in.