Complex Numbers

Headline Questions Are Usually Answered "No."

I should probably type the words "trigger warning" here, because I know some of my readers have mental health issues. But I also know some of you are more triggered by trigger warnings. Oops, too late. Sorry.

http://nautil.us/issue/45/power/does-depression-have-an-evolutionary-purpose

I want to call bullshit on this. I really do. But it's not my field - far from it. My only experience with psychology was a) one class in biological psychology in college and b) depression diagnosis and unsuccessful treatment thereof.

So I'm throwing this out there.

Now, usually, I mine quotes from the articles I link, but few of them in this one are really worth isolating; I think one needs to read the article to get the idea.

I have problems with how evolutionary "explanations" for this and that and the other thing are generally portrayed. I know I've said this before. My biggest problem with it is somewhat addressed toward the end of the article, but only after the author throws out a lot of speculation about how depression might be advantageous from an evolutionary standpoint.

One problem is this: When it comes to things like, I don't know, skull shape, we have an intermittent fossil record thereof. We can see, based on bones dug up here and there, what human, protohuman, prehuman, and other ape skulls look like and how their general forms changed over time. It's easy, then, to see a general trend toward a larger cranium, and how that could accommodate our relatively large brains. We can also see changes in hand / finger bones, and can make a good inference as to why our hands were evolutionarily advantageous.

When it comes to behavior, though, the fossil record is necessarily mute.

With evolution, not every trait is a survival trait. Some are vestigial or effectively so. Others are incidental. One way evolution works is that incidental traits sometimes end up aiding survival and/or reproduction, so those traits can get passed on. Vestigial traits like - I want to say the appendix, but I've heard that might actually be part of the immune system - whether or not you can wiggle your ears are generally neutral to survival, but might have had some benefit in a distant ancestor.

So, in my uneducated view, depression could just as easily be a byproduct of cognition, a neutral one. How can it be neutral when you take suicide into account? Well, as the article pointed out, most suicide attempts fail. Hence, it doesn't necessarily take a person out of the gene pool. Also I should add that while I've been depressed, I've never been suicidal; I don't know what the stats on that are, but I think the article conflates "depression" and "suicidal ideation," and that pisses me right off.

Not caring if you live or die isn't the same thing as actively seeking to end one's life.

So anyway, smells like bullshit to me. To be fair, whenever someone combines "psychology" with "evolution," my BS detector swings into the red, but I'm sure some studies in that area are legit.

I'm more concerned with this holding out false hope to people, or, conversely, possibly making someone think "Oh, well, it's okay if I off myself, then, because evolution wired me to do that." As the article itself points out, "Even if depression evolved as a useful tool over the eons, that doesn’t make it useful today." You know, like the appendix or ear-wiggling ability.

See, we also evolved to have conscious thoughts, to use science, and to otherwise work to overcome atavistic impulses. I, for one, have had my appendix removed; whatever benefit it might have been providing was suddenly outweighed by its cost to my health. We can make these choices.

Still, the article makes some interesting points and I'm curious to see if this line of speculation goes anywhere.