Evolving Psychiatry

Feb 26 2025 42 ep. 37 mins 43
Evolving Psychiatry Podcast artwork

Evolutionary psychiatry offers evolutionary explanations for the range of mental health conditions identified by psychiatry today. The Evolving Psychiatry podcast provides interviews, insights and an introduction to evolutionary psychiatry, with guest appearances from leading academics and psychiatrists.

  Health & Fitness
RSS feed Share
Copy RSS


Subscribe on Podcast Addict


Tech and Mental Health | Tanay Katiyar | Evolving Psychiatry Podcast #42

Feb 26 2025 85 mins  
Social media is bad for mental health right? Well... it's more complicated than that. In this episode, we discuss the ways in which novel digital technologies can also improve mental health, and how an evolutionary perspective on tech helps illuminate its dual effects of harming and healing.Tanay Katiyar is a PhD student, co-supervised by Amy Orben and Nikhil Chaudhary, at the

For the Good of the Group? | Adam Hunt | Evolving Psychiatry Podcast #41

Feb 13 2025 38 mins  
Did mental disorders evolve to provide benefits to the community around us? Well, maybe, but these sorts of explanations could be criticised as naive 'group selection'. In this episode Adam goes into the nuance of understanding how evolution actually works in this common area of debate.Dr Adam Hunt is a researcher in the emerging field of evolutionary psychiatry at the Leve

Autism, Evolution, Neurodiversity | Adam Hunt | Evolving Psychiatry Podcast #40

Feb 04 2025 87 mins  
Why did the human species evolve autism? What about different forms of autism? How does an evolutionary perspective align with the neurodiversity movement? Dr Adam Hunt is a researcher in the emerging field of evolutionary psychiatry at the Leverhulme Center for Human Evolutionary Studies at the University of Cambridge. Since 2019 he has served on the executive committee of the Ev

Personality and Psychopathology | Marco Del Giudice | Evolving Psychiatry Podcast #39

Jan 24 2025 142 mins  
Why do autism and schizophrenia exist? What are 'fast and slow' life history strategies? What are controversies and opportunities facing the field of evolutionary psychiatry? In this episode, we go deep with Marco Del Giudice... Dr. Marco Del Giudice is an Associate Professor in the Department of Life Sciences at the University of Trieste, Italy. His interdisciplinary rese

Understanding Support Networks | Alessandra Cassar | Evolving Psychiatry Podcast #38

Nov 25 2024 71 mins  
Humans rely on each other. Mothers, in particular, need help raising children. In this episode we discuss Professor Alessandra Cassar's work seeking to understand how maternal depression relates to gaining social support. We also touch on where evolutionary perspectives may be useful in structuring society more widely. Alessandra Cassar is a professor of economics at the Universit

Susceptibility to Substance Addiction | Tom Carpenter | Evolving Psychiatry Podcast #37

Nov 17 2024 45 mins  
Why have humans evolved tendencies for substance addiction? In this episode, Adam and Tom discuss the evolutionary explanations for these vulnerabilities. The discussion is based on their paper "Evolutionary perspectives on substance and behavioural addictions: Distinct and shared pathways to understanding, prediction and prevention". Dr Tom Carpenter is a resident doctor in Psych

Evolved Behavioural Addictions | Giuseppe Pierpaolo Merola | Evolving Psychiatry Podcast #36

Nov 12 2024 69 mins  
Social media, video games, gambling... why are some activities so rewarding that we become addicted? In this episode, we discuss the reason humans are susceptible to 'behavioural addictions', referencing our shared paper 'Evolutionary perspectives on substance and behavioural addictions: Distinct and shared pathways to understanding, prediction and prevention'. Dr. Giuseppe Pierpa

Why Depression Exists | Ed Hagen | Evolving Psychiatry Podcast #35

Nov 03 2024 65 mins  
Depression is often linked to adversity: why would it reliably appear in such conditions? Ed Hagen has spent over forty years wondering about this question, and is one of the world's foremost researchers on evolutionary approaches to depression. We discuss depression in this interview. Ed Hagen is a Pofessor of Evolutionary Anthropology at Washington State University. Professor H

Evolutionary Storytelling | Adam Hunt | Evolving Psychiatry Podcast #34

Oct 27 2024 54 mins  
The past is invisible - how are we supposed to know the truth behind our evolutionary history? In this episode, Adam Hunt discusses the complexity of the reality behind our evolution, and the limits of science in telling these stories. Dr Adam Hunt is a postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge. He received his PhD in evolutionary biology and philosophy from the Univer

Mental Health in the Jungle | Camila Scaff | Evolving Psychiatry Podcast #33

Oct 22 2024 67 mins  
In the Amazon rainforest, how would mental illness manifest? What is life in non-industrialised societies like? Camila Scaff discusses social life, loneliness, and her journey investigating mental health and disorder amongst the Tsimane of the Bolivian Amazon. Dr. Camila Scaff earned her PhD in Cognitive Sciences from the École Normale Supérieure - Paris Diderot University (now