Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

Mental disorders are a real scourge for our biological species. But why is there so much mental suffering in human life? Part of the reason is that emotional states such as anxiety, bad mood, and grief have been preserved and shaped by natural selection because they are beneficial. True, up to a certain limit. Fear helps us avoid danger—but at the cost of the inevitable false alarms. Despondency allows you not to waste energy on the pursuit of the unrealizable, but often develops into patho...