Higher Prevalence of Depression in Women: A Novel Evolutionary Justification

Volume 4 - Issue 1

Saeed Shoja Shafti*

Received: May 26, 2020;   Published: June 04, 2020

DOI: 10.32474/SJPBS.2020.04.000178

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Abstract

The most consistent finding across all of the studies on the prevalence and incidence of unipolar major depression is that it is approximately twofold more common among women than men. Although, during the last century psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychology had founded a lot of theories with respect to psychopathology, it should be accentuated that still no hypothetical points have been supported by methodical research. Evolutionary psychology and psychiatry is based on Darwin’s theory regarding evolution and sexual selection is a subtype of natural selection in which individuals compete for mates. While brains result in activities that maximize inclusive fitness, reproductive effort is to get mates, and to take care of offspring.
Negative emotions exist only because they have been useful… for human genes, even if not always for human individuals. So, determining if an emotional response is atypical necessitates knowing the circumstances it has been shaped to cope with, and whether or not that state is present. While low mood is aroused when efforts to reach a goal are proving futile, continued pursuit of an unapproachable aim can escalate low mood into clinical depression. Though evolutionary psychology and psychiatry has supposed, so far, some specific mechanisms as regards the genesis of depression in human being, according to an innovative explanation depression may result from a “passive” ongoing struggle for attainment of a favorite mate, which may foster the mentality for engagement of proximate mechanisms for generation of depression; a phenomenon similar to learned helplessness. The present article reviews the involving elements and mechanisms of the said formulation and considers a practical solution, incidentally. the general idea that individuals with an internal locus of control are more likely to resist the pressure to conform by their peers.

Keywords: Depression; Psychoanalysis; Psychodynamic psychology; Evolutionary psychology; Evolutionary psychiatry; Evolution

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