Good Bad Feelings: Why Evolution Allows Anxiety, Depression, and Other Mental Disorders

Mental disorders are a real scourge for our biological species. But why is there so much emotional suffering in human life?
Partly it's because emotional states like anxiety, bad mood, and grief have been preserved and shaped through natural selection, as they are useful. Of course, only up to a certain point.
Fear helps us avoid danger – but at the cost of inevitable false alarms. Despondency allows us not to waste energy chasing the unattainable, but often turns into pathological depression. Other mental disorders, such as drug or alcohol dependence or anorexia, arise from a mismatch between the ancient settings of our body and the modern environment. There are also strong evolutionary grounds for sexual disorders and the preservation of schizophrenia genes.
Relying on illustrative cases from his own clinical practice and discoveries in evolutionary biology, Dr. Randolph Nessy not only answers the question of why natural selection has formed such a fragile psyche in humans, but also attempts to outline paths to alleviate this suffering, taking into account personal circumstances and individual traits.