Depression's Evolutionary Roots: Two scientists suggest that depression is not a malfunction, but a mental adaptation that brings certain cognitive advantages

Depression seems to pose an evolutionary paradox. Research in the US and other countries estimates that between 30 to 50 percent of people have met current psychiatric diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder sometime in their lives. But the brain plays crucial roles in promoting survival and reproduction, so the pressures of evolution should have left our brains resistant to such high rates of malfunction. Mental disorders should generally be rare — why isn’t depression?  Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

Via:  Scientific American