Evolutionary Theories of Mental Illness Flashcards
Early theories and treatments
devil possession
exoticism
Bronze Age and Medieval treatments:
trepanation
Year of Bedlam Hospital set up:
1600/1700s
William James Norris in Bedlam for 10 years brought about what change?
Mad House Act of 1828
Who was instrumental in psychiatric disorder classification?
Kraeplin (1856-1926)
How did Kraeplin categorise conditions?
by patterns of symptoms
Work of Kraepelin:
identified pathological basis of Alzheimer’s disease
identified schizophrenia and manic depression
Drapetomania
‘The Running Away Disease’
treatment of Drapetomania:
Rush’s tranquilising chair
1800s
Psychoanalysis
developed in response to Freud not believing in childhood sexual abuse
psychoanalysis mostly practiced where?
USA
how long for psychoanalaysis to be efffective?
2-3 years
Antonia Egas Moniz
pure alcohol injected to the brain to destroy tissues
Buckhardt work:
psychosurgery schizophrenic patients with a 50% success rate
Work by Fulton and Jacobsen:
removed frontal lobe of chimpanzees
Freeman:
transorbital frontal lobotomies
number of surgeries performed by Freeman:
3,500
2,500 ice pick
how many people in the US had a lobotomy?
50 thousand
US, Britain, Scandainavia, lobotomies performed until what year?
1980s
number of people institutionalised reduced in response to what?
advent of anti-depressants
first gen AD
1950s
2nd gen AD
70s
diagnostic methods:
DSM- 1-V
ICD 1-10
psychiatrists unable to:
identify and demonstrate the tissue pathology and establish cure
why have new AD failed?
based upon old AD which were flawed
by what year had most companies stopped looking for psychiatric drugs?
2010s
how many people derived benefit from being given a placebo?
40%
combination therapy:
higher than placebo
psilocybin induces
placebo effect only
issues with Nesse’s approach:
- OCD can cause disease
- does not account for PTSD
- involuntary poo
- not being fearful
Nesse related to anxiety disorders to what?
corresponding dangers
Human fear response:
freezing
eyes wide
mouth open
hands open
involuntary defaecation is a …
fear response
allows for removal of diseased material
who applied evolution to psychiatry?
Nesse
Evolutionary Theories of Depression:
- The environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA)
- paleo theory
EEA
mismatch theory
traits we have had are not suitable for our current environment
city centred- causes of depression:
- negative life events
- loss of kinship
- disrupted nuclear family
- loss of female support networks
- lack of care for children
the environment of evolutionary adaptness weaknesses:
which environment out of the 3 are they reffering to?
why do so many people live cities?
evolutionary theories of depression:
social competition
social navigation
defection hypothesis
individual differences
pathogen host degence proposition
produced by a pathogen
social competition hypothesis:
defeated in the world
social navigation hypothesis:
rumination
defection hypothesis
post partum depression
individual differences
normlal distribution of sadness
pathogen host defence
avoid people to avoid infection
produced by pathogen hypothesis
pathogen causes depression
criticisms of clinicans approach to depression:
- too much focus on emotion
- implies human evolution is not ongoing
- assume depression is a pathology and not an adaption
- current envirnment seen as messed up earlier paradise
clinicans approach to depression is unable to be
tested by an experiment : fails Popper’s test
psychiatris analysis focuses on self report and therefore can ignore
non-reported symptoms
Ethology
Tinbergen
induction
Tinbergen’s four question:
Form
Ontogeny
Function
Phylogeny
ontogeny
how does the organism change through its life?
phylogeny
how do similiar speices solve the same problems
defensive form of depression:
hunched body posture
avoidnce eye contact
diminished appetite for food and sex
withdrawal within social groups
sleep disturbance
depression may allow for surivival withn
a hostile group
The Third Ventrice Hypothesis
hypothamus: sex and appetite
pineal: sleep
