Russell Crowe plays John Nash in A Beautiful Mind
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The relationship between evolution and schizophrenia comes under the field of evolutionary psychopathology that has been developing since the mid 1990s. This new field of investigation was largely initiated by a book called Evolution and Healing: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine (see ‘Further reading’) by evolutionary psychiatrist Randolph Nesse and evolutionary theorist (the late) George Williams. The following questions and topics for debate look at Nesse’s work and revisit the topics from my article.
1 Evolutionary psychopathology attempts to provide evolutionary explanations for mental illness and personality disorders. It argues that many of these problems are kept in the population due to the advantages they may provide (or might have done in our evolutionary past).
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