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Evolutionary psychiatry, also known as Darwinian Psychiatry, [1] [2] is a theoretical approach to psychiatry that aims to explain psychiatric disorders in evolutionary terms. [3] [4] As a branch of the field of evolutionary medicine, it is distinct from the medical practice of psychiatry in its emphasis on providing scientific explanations rather than treatments for mental disorder.
Mainstream evolutionary psychology grew out of earlier movements which applied the principles of evolutionary biology to understand the mind and behavior such as sociobiology, ethology, and behavioral ecology, [5] differing from these earlier approaches by focusing on identifying psychological adaptations rather than adaptive behavior. [20]
Clinical psychology and psychiatry have historically been relatively isolated from the field of evolutionary psychology. [49] Some psychiatrists raise the concern that evolutionary psychologists seek to explain hidden adaptive advantages without engaging the rigorous empirical testing required to back up such claims.
Evolutionary psychology, therefore, proposes that the majority of human psychological mechanisms are adapted to reproductive problems frequently encountered in Pleistocene environments. [49] In broad terms, these problems include those of growth, development, differentiation, maintenance, mating, parenting, and social relationships.
The term is generally used to describe a model advocated by George L. Engel in 1977. The model builds upon the idea that "illness and health are the result of an interaction between biological, psychological, and social factors." [1] which according to Derick T. Wade and Peter W. Halligan, as of 2017, is generally accepted. The idea behind the ...
Also called functionalism. The Darwinian view that many or most physiological and behavioral traits of organisms are adaptations that have evolved for specific functions or for specific reasons (as opposed to being byproducts of the evolution of other traits, consequences of biological constraints, or the result of random variation). adaptive radiation The simultaneous or near-simultaneous ...
Biological psychiatry or biopsychiatry is an approach to psychiatry that aims to understand mental disorder in terms of the biological function of the nervous system.It is interdisciplinary in its approach and draws on sciences such as neuroscience, psychopharmacology, biochemistry, genetics, epigenetics and physiology to investigate the biological bases of behavior and psychopathology.
Evolutionary epistemology refers to three distinct topics: (1) the biological evolution of cognitive mechanisms in animals and humans, (2) a theory that knowledge itself evolves by natural selection, and (3) the study of the historical discovery of new abstract entities such as abstract number or abstract value that necessarily precede the individual acquisition and usage of such abstractions.