Time: Jan 22, 3-4pm (but coffee and cookies will be served at 2:30)

Place: McMaster University, Michael DeGroote Centre for Learning and Discovery (also known as MDCL), Room 1105

Description: Human emotions don’t seem to add up. On one hand, they can be so overwhelming that they lead to addiction and suicide. On the other hand, throughout human history, people have coped effectively with extreme physical and emotional stress.

People once hunted for large, dangerous prey, for example, enduring gruelling physical activity and facing significant danger of injury and death. Up until the 1600’s, about 50 per cent of all children died before puberty, yet their parents – our ancestors – carried on. How are we to reconcile the evidence that humans are both emotionally fragile and emotionally durable?

The question has important implications for mental health. Under current diagnostic guidelines, millions of people are diagnosed with depression every year, and are primarily treated with antidepressants. Nevertheless, many prominent physicians, clinicians and researchers are concerned that current diagnostic guidelines categorize normal, adaptive emotional responses as disorders. There is also concern that antidepressant medications are not as safe or effective as is commonly believed.

In this talk, I plan to show how evolutionary theory is crucial to resolving these significant public health issues, demonstrating many of the points with research that my lab has conducted on depression over the last several years.

BIOGRAPHY: Paul Andrews is an Assistant Professor of Evolutionary Psychology. His educational background includes Aerospace Engineering (BS, University of Arizona), Law (JD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), and Biology (PhD, University of New Mexico). His research has been covered widely in the media, including the CBC, The New York Times, Scientific American, and many other outlets.