Written by an outstanding team of internationally recognised experts, this practical textbook is based on the European Certificate in Anxiety and Mood Disorders. It provides a thorough overview of diagnosis and treatment of mood disorders and analyses the most recent developments and scientific evidence. Covers the most important clinical topics in the field, including symptomatology, natural course and diagnosis Treatment strategies are reviewed in the light of all available empirical evidence Outstanding list of international contributors

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.

This book provides a new perspective on the association between religious beliefs and mental health. The book is divided into five parts, the first of which traces the development of theories of organic evolution in the cultural and religious context before Charles Darwin. Part II describes the major evolutionary theories that Darwin proposed in his three books on evolution, and the religious, sociological, and scientific reactions to his theories. Part III introduces the reader to the concept of evolutionary psychiatry. It discusses how different regions of the brain evolved over time, and explains that certain brain regions evolved to protect us from danger by assessing threats of harm in the environment, including other humans. Specifically, this part describes: how psychiatric symptoms that are commonly experienced by normal individuals during their everyday lives are the product of brain mechanisms that evolved to protect us from harm; the prevalence rate of psychiatric symptoms in the U.S. general population; how religious and other beliefs influence the brain mechanisms that underlie psychiatric symptoms; and the brain regions that are involved in different psychiatric disorders. Part IV presents the findings of U.S. studies demonstrating that positive beliefs about God and life-after-death, and belief in meaning-in-life and divine forgiveness have salutary associations with mental health, whereas negative beliefs about God and life-after-death, belief in the Devil and human evil, and doubts about one’s religious beliefs have pernicious associations with mental health. The last part of the book summarizes each section and recommends research on the brain mechanism underlying psychiatric symptoms, and the relationships among these brain mechanisms, religious beliefs, and mental health in the context of ETAS Theory.

An accessible, objective and comprehensive textbook providing an engaging and user-friendly introduction to evolutionary psychology.

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.

Relationships with family are important to our emotional health and can play a significant role in our social success. We need our families and yet frequently have a great difficulty understanding them. Hundreds of books have been published with the goal of improving understanding and relationships among family and relationships; few, if any, have done so with an evolutionary approach. The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Family Psychology focuses on the reasons underlying family behavior and how a greater understanding of these factors can help us to better understand our own family behaviors. Recognizing that a deeper understanding of human families can be found through an understanding of similar phenomena in other species, the volume demonstrates how an understanding of family ties can inform understanding of our relationships to non-kin.

This review of recent evolutionary theories on psychopathology takes on controversies and contradictions both with established psychological thought and within the evolutionary field itself. Opening with the ancestral origins of the familiar biopsychosocial model of psychological conditions, the book traces distinctive biological and cultural pathways shaping human development and their critical impact on psychiatric and medical disorders. Analyses of disparate phenomena such as jealousy, social anxiety, depressive symptoms, and antisocial behavior describe adaptive functions that have far outlasted their usefulness, or that require further study and perhaps new directions for treatment. In addition, the book’s compelling explorations of violence, greed, addiction, and suicide challenge us to revisit many of our assumptions regarding what it means to be human. Included in the coverage: · Evolutionary foundations of psychiatric compared to non-psychiatric disorders. · Evolutionary psychopathology, uncomplicated depression, and the distinction between normal and disordered sadness. · Depression: is rumination really adaptive? · A CBT approach to coping with sexual betrayal and the green-eyed monster. · Criminology’s modern synthesis: remaking the science of crime with Darwinian insight. · Anthropathology: the abiding malady of the species. With its wealth of interdisciplinary viewpoints, The Evolution of Psychopathology makes an appropriate supplementary text for advanced graduate courses in the evolutionary sciences, particularly in psychology, biology, anthropology, sociology, and philosophy.

A new updated edition of the first integrated and comprehensive textbook to explain the principles of evolutionary biology from a medical perspective and to focus on how medicine and public health might utilise evolutionary biology.

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.

"Evolutionary social science is having a renaissance. This volume showcases the empirical and theoretical advancements produced by the evolutionary study of romantic relationships. The editors assembled an international collection of contributors to trace how evolved psychological mechanisms shape strategic computation and behavior across the lifespan of a romantic partnership. Each chapter provides an overview of historic and contemporary research on the psychological mechanisms and processes underlying initiation, maintenance, and dissolution of romantic relationships. Contributors discuss popular and cutting-edge methods for data analysis and theory development, critically analyse the state of evolutionary relationship science, and provide discerning recommendations for future research. The handbook integrates a broad range of topics (e.g., partner preference and selection, competition and conflict, jealousy and mate guarding, parenting, partner loss and divorce, and post-relationship affiliation) that are discussed alongside major sources of strategic variation in mating behavior, such as sex and gender diversity, developmental life history, neuroendocrine processes, technological advancement, and culture. Its content promises to enrich students' and established researchers' views on the current state of the discipline and should challenge a diverse cross-section of relationship scholars and clinicians to incorporate evolutionary theorizing into their professional work"--