We have all learnt from the latest statistics that the Covid-19 pandemic is having a damaging effect on people's mental health. We have been informed also that one in four of us is likely to have some sort of mental ailment during our lifetime. As an anthropologist who is interested in evolutionary psychology, I have been asking myself is there an evolutionary explanation behind the fact that mental disorders persist in human beings despite the debilitating consequences inflicted upon each generation.
Ever since Richard Dawkins wrote about The Selfish Gene (1976), there has been a school of thought that perceives natural selection operating for our genes, alone, without any consideration for what is best for us as individuals, or without any care for our personal well-being. If this form of biological determinism is correct there is no reason why our genes should take into account the stresses and strains of modern urban living or crises like a pandemic. In evolutionary terms, homo sapiens' mental structures, processes, capacity and consciousness are adaptations to an environment that existed hundreds of thousands of years ago.
I have written before as to how, seemingly, irrational emotions are a product of useful evolutionary traits that were formed in the palaeolithic (stone age) period when humans were hunter-gatherers (https://timboatswain.wixsite.com/website/post/anxiety-and-uncertainty-in-the-time-of-covid-19-what-does-it-mean-for-humanity). In the same way I argued that anxiety helped in making homo sapiens alert to dangerous situations, have depressed states and moods evolved from emotions that were advantageous in evolutionary terms? If these mental states are the result of an adaptation, natural selection, precisely what advantages did and do they bestow on homo sapiens as a species? It is possible that non-pathological mental conditions were motivators in both shifting behavioural strategies and in conserving energy by inhibiting unuseful mental activity.
One of the reasons that humans have been so successful is our ability to engage in complex social cooperation and manage competitive situations. The biological drivers, however, for survival and reproduction are incredibly demanding - 'survival of the fittest' - but the strain this creates for human existence is not necessarily the best strategy for an individual as it can lead to a violent and destructive endgame. If, for example, we look at our cousins, chimpanzees who have 96+% of the same DNA as humans, the concentrated level of rivalry and violence undermine their opportunities as a species to engage in cooperative behaviour. We can observe some empathetic actions but the degree to which chimpanzees can cooperate is incredibly limited compared to homo sapiens. It is human beings various mental states, perhaps including disorders, that enable us to react to a range of emotional moods and focus our behaviour to empathise and engage with each other in a way that is both adaptable and socially subtle. Such emotional moods might be perceived as not conventionally 'normal' but that variance and difference take us beyond autonomic reactions in contested social situations.
This suggests, say depression, a low mood, or other emotional states, are a response to a situation, that can have evolutionary advantages for humans. Though this might be right for the species, it does not mean that individuals who are experiencing this condition should not feel unwell or should not be medically treated. Anyone going through a mental illness needs relief by whatever medical means is available. It is, of course, also important to make a distinction between severe mental illnesses, often genetically transmitted like bipolar disease, autism and schizophrenia and natural emotional responses to specific contexts, like the end of a relationship, grief, or, indeed, the Coronavirus pandemic.
I would argue it is important that we understand that emotional moods, like anxiety, and non-pathological mental disorders are not necessarily abnormal but are an evolutionary trait which is trying to tell us that our condition has a meaning and a purpose so that, importantly, we as individuals are not necessarily defective or broken.
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