Psychology Live! With Dr. Paul Andrews

We bring science to the Hamilton public in a lively and interactive setting! Join us at Fairweather Brewery to learn about psychological science and human behaviour from world experts.

This talk: “The Question of Depression: How depression evolved to help people answer complex questions.”

Speaker Bio: Dr. Paul Andrews is an associate professor of evolutionary psychology in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University. His research focuses on understanding the evolution of depression and the serotonin system, as well as the effects of antidepressants on mental and physical health.

Abstract: Depression is considered a mental disorder, but converging evidence indicates that depression evolved to help people answer complex questions. The questions that trigger depression can involve gut-wrenching decisions (“How do I tell my parents that I squandered all my money?”), learning to avoid harmful events (“How do I avoid making the same terrible mistake again?”), and questions about living or dying (“To be or not to be, that is the question”). To help them answer their questions, depression promotes a careful, deliberative style of thinking, which is attentionally demanding and time consuming. This makes it difficult to do anything other than think, which leads to the impression that depression makes people unresponsive to their environments. The extensive thinking required to answer complex questions can make depression last for weeks or months, but episodes usually resolve on their own because depression usually helps people answer their questions.