Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Psychiatry’s Missing Foundation in Evolutionary Biology- Seminar by Professor Randolph Nesse
Wed 13th February 2019 from 12-1pm. Gustave Tuck LT main campus, UCL
Professor Randolph Nesse discusses his much-anticipated new book that offers a new framework which could revolutionise our perspectives around today’s mental health crisis. It isfilled with fascinating case studies and stories, compassionately told.
With his classic book Why We Get Sick, Randolph Nesse established the field of evolutionary medicine. Now he returns with a book that transforms our understanding of mental disorders by exploring a fundamentally new question. Instead of asking why certain people suffer from mental illness, Nesse asks why natural selection has left us all with fragile minds.
Drawing on revealing stories from his own clinical practice and insights from evolutionary biology, Nesse shows how negative emotions are useful in certain situations, yet can become excessive. To give just one example, low mood prevents us from wasting effort in pursuit of unreachable goals, but it often escalates into pathological depression. His insights help to explain the pervasiveness of human suffering, and show us new paths for relieving it.
See Randolph Nesse’s website here GoodReasons.info
And the Book of the Week review here Evening Standard Book of the week_ Good Reasons for Bad Feelings by Randolph M. Nesse
