"Evolutionary psychiatry: Foundations, progress and challenges" was published today in World Psychiatry. It encourages psychiatry to find its missing foundation in evolutionary biology but discourages reckless speculation. @ISEMPH @HumBehEvoSoc
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/20515545/2… I will summarise the main points in tweets over the next few days. The core thesis: many of psychiatry's problems can be addressed by adopting the foundation in evolutionary biology that transformed our understanding of animal behavior 50 years ago. randolphnesse.com/articles/menta…

Are some diseases products of traits that are intrinsically vulnerable to failure? The deadline this Friday for #ISEMPH2022 abstracts inspires a deep dive into #schizophrenia genetics. @isemph @HumBehEvoSoc @BioengineerGM @rcpsych
isemph.org In this week's Nature, Singh et al. report 10 ultra-rare variants that substantially increase the risk of schizophrenia, some more than 50 fold. Remarkable progress. Huge studies with deep sequencing are paying off! @RiadhAbed1 @ent3c @AllenFrancesMD
nature.com/articles/s4158…

My virtual Grand Rounds Wed at 1 pm ET at @McGovernMed U Texas Psychiatry will be open access at uthealth.webex.com/uthealth/j.php…
It is so hard to choose the insights from evolutionary biology that will be valued most by clinicians and researchers. Here are candidates. Which are best? Anxiety and low mood are adaptations shaped by natural selection, but individual instances are usually useless, even when regulation mechanisms are normal. Understanding why is crucial for clinicians and researchers, and helpful for patients. @ISREorg @WellcomeLeap @DrHowardLiu

The best example of kin selection? Multicellular bodies. Their cells are all identical twins whose interests are perfectly aligned, thanks to meiosis producing gametes with only one copy of a genome, and somatic cells sequestered from the germ line. For mitochondria, however... multiple copies are transmitted in female gametes. The resulting genetic competition creates what David Haig cogently describes as a "tragedy of the cytoplasmic commons."

On #DarwinDay it is wonderful to anticipate the fast progress coming to psychiatry as it discovers its missing foundation in evolutionary biology.
@isemph @HumBehEvoSoc @AllenFrancesMD @mentaldaily_com @Got_Anxiety @sse_evolution @eshb @RiadhAbed1 @PFinuras @APAPsychiatric The day between #DarwinDay and #ValentinesDay gives an opportunity to respond to questions about
what #evolution offers to #psychiatry and
why I think it will bring fast progress.

#Antidepressants seem effective in the clinic but not in controlled studies. Why? Let’s consider all possibilities. @PeterDKramer @AllenFrancesMD @DrHowardLiu @DalackMd @blackdoginst @NAMICommunicate @Got_Anxiety @EikoFried @PsychTimes @matthewckeller @RiadhAbed1 @APAPsychiatric Most of us who have prescribed antidepressants for thousands of patients have heard hundreds of them report transformed lives. “It is as if I walked out of a dark room into sunlight” “All of a sudden I can experience pleasure again”

The flood of articles offering “Quick tips for controlling your Covid anxiety” makes me nervous. After 30 years treating patients in one of the first specialty clinics devoted to anxiety disorders, I should have super advice, right? Not really, but here are 6 observations. Quick tips can help but they can be worse than useless. Exercise, eat right, get sleep, talk with friends, and challenge negative thoughts. Like diet suggestions, they can help, but they can be hard to follow, ineffective, or prone to make some people feel like failures.

Starting June 1, I will tweet a chapter each day from my new book goodreasons.info about how the light of evolutionary biology can dissolve the mists that swirl around mental disorders. Well, some mists for some disorders. @DuttonBooks @hbes2019 @LondonEvolution @ISEMPH From the Preface: I wanted to write this book as soon as I realized that evolution could explain why bodies are vulnerable to disease. But the rest of medicine had to come first. Why We Get Sick stirred lots of interest. The new book is about why mental illness exists at all.