Episode #87. Good reasons for bad feelings. A new approach to mental disorders. All about social anxiety and emotions and evolution with Dr Randolph Nesse, Psychiatrist and Professor and Founder of Ev
In the podcast we discuss with Dr Randolph Nesse his foundational and pioneering work in evolutionary medicine and his work with patients. He talks with his patients and explains to them that, in many cases, their disorders are not a disease or some kind of failing, as they have been told by other practitioners, but rather a natural and inherently useful response that has “gone overboard”. Evolution makes women on average twice as prone to excessive anxiety as men for good reason. Nesse reports that patients who experience panic attacks are invariably “normalised and empowered” by such a perspective.Similarly, those who experience prolonged low mood may be, if not comforted or cured, then perhaps illuminated by the notion that their state of mind has a role to play in Darwinian terms. Nesse presents the evidence to show that the mechanisms of despair have evolved to force us to realign our goals and desires: we would never be forced to make positive choices to influence our circumstances were it not for the anger at loss in our lives or the pain of not reaching our goals.Randolph M. Nesse, MD is Research Professor of Life Sciences at Arizona State University, where he became the Founding Director of the Center for Evolution Medicine in 2014. He was previously Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan where he led the Evolution and Human Adaptation Program and helped to establish one of the first anxiety disorders clinics. His research on the neuroendocrinology of anxiety evolved into studies on why aging exists. Those studies led to collaboration with the evolutionary biologist George Williams on Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine, a book that initiated much new work in the field of evolutionary medicine. His research is on how selection shapes mechanisms that regulate defenses such as pain, fever, anxiety and low mood, and how social selection shaped human capacities for morality. His larger mission is to establish evolutionary biology as a basic science for medicine. Dr. Nesse is the Founding President of the International Society for Evolution, Medicine & Public Health, a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Sciences, and an elected Fellow of the AAAS. His new book, Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry shows how asking evolutionary questions about why mental disorders exist can make psychiatry more effective. Bio for Randolph M. Nesse, M.D.Please use these links for all publicityhttp://RandolphNesse.comhttp://GoodReasons.infowww.profselenabartlett.comSupport the showSubscribe and support the podcast at https://www.buzzsprout.com/367319/supporters/newLearn more at www.profselenabartlett.com