The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00IIWXVSU | Format: EPUB
The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic Description
Nearly every depressed person is assured by doctors, well-meaning friends and family, the media, and ubiquitous advertisements that the underlying problem is a chemical imbalance. Such a simple defect should be fixable, yet despite all of the resources that have been devoted to finding a pharmacological solution, depression remains stubbornly widespread. Why are we losing this fight?
In this humane and illuminating challenge to defect models of depression, psychologist Jonathan Rottenberg argues that depression is a particularly severe outgrowth of our natural capacity for emotion. In other words, it is a low mood gone haywire. Drawing on recent developments in the science of mood - and his own harrowing depressive experience as a young adult - Rottenberg explains depression in evolutionary terms, showing how its dark pull arises from adaptations that evolved to help our ancestors ensure their survival. Moods, high and low, evolved to compel us to more efficiently pursue rewards. While this worked for our ancestors, our modern environment - in which daily survival is no longer a sole focus - makes it all too easy for low mood to slide into severe, long-lasting depression.
Weaving together experimental and epidemiological research, clinical observations, and the voices of individuals who have struggled with depression, The Depths offers a bold new account of why depression endures - and makes a strong case for de-stigmatizing this increasingly common condition. In so doing, Rottenberg offers hope in the form of his own and other patients? recovery, and points the way toward new paths for treatment.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 4 hours and 27 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Gildan Media, LLC
- Audible.com Release Date: February 18, 2014
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00IIWXVSU
I just learned about and purchased this book and so far have only scanned it. I will review it more fully at a later time. Let me begin, however, by saying that any book that offers an evolutionarily-informed analysis of depression as an alternative to the standard medical model of unmitigated pathology is to be warmly welcomed! I have seen enough of this book to say, as an evolutionary biologist who has published on depression myself, that there is substance here. Yea!!
It looks, however, as though several potentially important works concerning the evolutionary function of depression in human social life largely have been skirted here. As the author states, theories don't prove anything. However, theories guide research, and without full detailed knowledge of all the potentially key correct theories, which can be very subtle and complex (after all, human minds and human social life are staggeringly complex), research will not progress efficiently. Moreover, the potentially therapeutic understanding of one's own condition will not be maximized.
Note that humans are obligate social creatures that depend, cross-culturally, upon "contractual reciprocity" for survival and reproduction. Thus we all build a social network around us that helps us solve most of our fitness-related problems. This contractual matrix sustains us, but it can also trap us... this basic problem must have been very common throughout much of human and perhaps even proto-human evolutionary history.
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