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An Evolutionary Upside to Depression? Not Necessarily.

We’ve spoken on the program before about the tendency in science to connect today’s  traits and ailments to evolutionary adaptations for survival from which they presumably developed.  Not every aspect of humanity derives from Darwinian roots, argues Dr. Richard Friedman, Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, and director of the psychopharmacology clinic there.  His essay, Depression Defies the Rush to find an Evolutionary Upside recently appeared in The New York Times. We asked Richard to tell us more about why he believes depression has relatively shallow roots in human history.

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