I am a strong believer in evolution and, as such, I have always wondered why some of the deadlier mental illnesses have survived the weeding out process. I read one article that proposed a possible answer that also incorporates the link between creativity and madness (documented in very good studies, by the way).
I wish I could find the original article (it is probably one of Redfield-Jamison’s) because I’m going to give a 2nd grader version of the original thoughts. Oh well, better to get the idea out than to wait until I get organized! Just think of this as the trailer for an article you’ll want to find yourself. So, here goes:
Since mentally ill people are generally less concerned with staying “in the box,”* at least when they are most ill, they are more likely to see solutions to problems that others think are unsolvable. I’m thinking here of mania and hallucinations — I have no idea what benefits depression brings; maybe better designs for mattresses. What seems possible, even obvious, to a sick person is way out of bounds for normal people.
Regular Joe: “No, silly, we can’t get across this gorge. It’s impossible. Let’s just go around.”
Sick Joe: “Yeah, but what if there were two massive columns holding up enormously thick ropes that held other ropes, which held up long planks of wood … You’re right; that is stupid. I’m stupid. I have nothing to live for…” Sick Joe’s idea, later credited to Regular Joe.
Therefore, even though a very high percentage of these people end up killing themselves, their usefulness to society could have already been substantial. Maybe that’s also why chicks dig even the ugliest artists — to keep their creative qualities in the gene pool.
I find it interesting that sick people generally kill themselves after reaching sexual maturity, giving them just enough time to make some sort of contribution to society. A moment’s thought will yield the obvious biological explanation for this. I just think it is interesting how elegant evolution solves the problem of species optimization.
*In America, managers are always telling people to “think outside the box.” When we do, though, they quickly admonish you for not being realistic. “It’s all that book knowledge you depend on. You would have learned more if you spent that time working in the real world.” Days later, “Yes, sir. That was MY idea. My trusty employees checked out the numbers to make sure MY idea was workable…”
13 responses so far ↓
Bill // 18 August 2007 at 10:20 pm
Regarding the theory that “thinking out of the box” is exclusive to crazy people, one must take into consideration that not all crazy people are geniuses and not all geniuses are crazy. Stop romanticizing suicidality and mental illness. I hope you keep this up for your viewers.
ideas2words // 19 August 2007 at 12:26 am
If you read what I wrote, and not what you think I wrote, you will see that I never claimed we crazy people have a monopoly on genius. Nor did I romanticize suicidality. I was simply, and only, speculating why suicidality would even exist if evolution was working properly.
Obviously, there have been briliant people who were not crazy and there have been a lot of stupid people who were looney. Neither of these facts changes the statistical significance that mentally ill people — especially bi-polars — are much more likely to be creative than the general population. I didn’t mean it to be an insult to TDHP, so I’m sorry if I offended anyone.
Why are you so angry at me?
Ray // 19 August 2007 at 11:03 am
Deadlier mental illnesses have survived the weeding out process for one only reason: Genetics is entropic. Look, if there would be certainty in the existence of criminal inheritance, don’t ya think that convicts’ sons would be isolated too?
“Theory of Natural Man” of Jean-Jacques Rousseau contends that man was neither inherently good nor bad when in the state of nature, but is corrupted by society. People are born with random genetic tendences “out of the box”. All this is a probabilistics game. If you have a depression tendence and circumstances lead you to gloom, guess what?, You’re going to be a depressive person! Same than homosexuals, addicts, geniuses, nobel prize winners, murderers etc. Sick people (SP) are NOT born, they’re upbrought. I have never suffered of depression, schizophrenia, BP disorder or something like that, but i absolutely know that under other circumstances i would have. Under other circumstances i would be in a prison or even worse: dead. That’s life!
I am starting a long journey to the understanding of this crazy world of mental illnesses and this is my rough point of view. I strongly believe that mental disorders can be cured in its initial stage if it’s treated adequately –I am struggling to do that with someone i love–. I’d rather prefer the *humanistic* than the *medical* model treatment, but i know that there is a moment when the mental illness gets worst and practically there is no way out. –When the mad guys become comatose patients–.
I would like to finish this comment with a small OT random rant –I need to recover my withdrawn Troll card
–.
“I hate when those sick bastards assert that they feel emptyness despite of having everything (a good family, education, food, shelter or a career). There is no such everything. Look at this list [1] and you’ll notice that all these people despite of their fame, lacked of something with much more value. Love? Money? Friendship? Fame? A Jet-Setter’s life?. NO! So stop venting sophisms (And please, reduce the usage of the words everything, nothing, everybody, nobody, none and everyone when speaking about your illness)”.
[1] http://depression.about.com/od/famous/Famous_People_With_Depression.htm
ideas2words // 19 August 2007 at 4:40 pm
First of all, if mental illness was the result of random environmental inputs, then there would be no correlation of the illness along ancestral lines. One might argue that children growing up in a household with depressed parents would have a tendency to become depressed, but one would be wrong. Studies of adopted children and twins have demonstrated the same level of tendency toward mental illness as their unknown parents and siblings (as high as 80% in bi-polars). For more medical information, please read these:
Aetiology and pathology of clinical depression
Gliogenesis and Glial Pathology in Depression
Ronald S. Duman, Ph.D. (Distinguished Investigator 2005) of Yale University, notes that one of the most consistent and exciting findings in the field of depression in recent years is the discovery that the density of glia is decreased in the brains of depressed patient
Altered cortical glutamatergic and GABAergic signal transmission with glial involvement in depression
I am a fan of Rousseau, and I have no doubt that he would have had tremendous insight into the subtleties of evolution, but he proceeded Charles Darwin by 100 years. And, it was almost 10 years after Rousseau’s death when Georges Cuvier demonstrated that extinction was a fact of geological history (a fact rejected by his contemporaries and predecessors). Rouseau was therefore working with models of human behavior that had no concept of (1) the evolution process, (2) a true understanding of the fossil record, (3) the possibility of extinction of whole classes of species and niches within species, and (4) genetic predisposition.
Lastly, when the pathophysiology of mental illness was discovered, psychiatrists the world over were not surprised at all. In their minds, major depression and bi-polar disorder had too many characteristics of a disease (in the medical, not colloquial sense) to not have some sort of pathology.
Denying these facts is one of the major reasons society can’t get past the stigma of mental illness. Their uninformed observations of their loved one’s course of recovery leads them to make moralistic judgments that are not at all useful and probably are in fact very harmful.
PS - No matter how bad it gets, there is always a way out. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t have put up with this disease for almost 30 years.
ideas2words // 19 August 2007 at 4:46 pm
cherished79, I would love to hear your take on this.
Ray // 19 August 2007 at 6:32 pm
I have a cousin who i played with when i was a child. He behaved as something we label as a “normal child”. He used to live in a small village near the big city.
I remember that a couple of years ago, i went to visit him because he was schizophrenic, he heard voices, he had allucinations, he couldn’t sleep and all that crazy stuff.
My first impression was: “Bullshit! How come, but he seemed well a few years ago!”. I was a teenager then, when i visited him. He was completely screwed, he couldn’t keep the thread of the conversation we had, he asked me the same questions during the same dialogue, he was hyperactive –He was always moving forth and back– and finally the worse: he agreed with all what i said as if he lacked of personal criterion. It was like if his brain was removed and he couldn’t use it –Colloquially speaking–.
I remember that i thought “C’mon what he need is some action: partying, clubbing and hooking!”; so i took him to do that but he couldn’t make it. Then i realised that it was too late and he couldn’t be cured, doctors i spoke told me that if he’d be treated earlier things will be different.
Then i asked my aunt about the origin of the illness. She told me that everything began when they moved from the small town to the *big* one. In the school my cousin was bullied because of his shy behaviour and he never said a word until the day he exploded and he left the high school with a potential mental illness inside him. Nobody paid attention to the illness because it looked like _sadness_ and “Things like this happens”.
I lost contact with him because i had my own life and my own problems. I haven’t heard news of him in years.
Moral: There is *t* time when things can be sorted out. Jump off before the ship sinks, otherwise there will be no exit.
Now my OT Rant: “Ideas, do you trust your psychiatrist?, in the history of psychiatry i only see errors: ECT, lobotomy, placeboes, oversimplification (…
It lacks easy access to proof of its proposal even as it deals with desorders of the most complex features of human life: mind and behaviour. So how can we trust such a rudimentary medical art?”
cherished79 // 19 August 2007 at 7:00 pm
I don’t profess to be an expert on mental illness, however, I do know that if both parents are bipolar, then statistics show a child has a 20% chance of having BP. I can go only from my experience within the mental health system about mental illness, and that is – mental illness is not environmental. We do not “catch” depression/bipolar, and almost unlike that of cancer (possibly a poor example) – lung cancer via smoking – this does not occur in mental illness. When emotional/mental factors in this illness become so severe, a black veil of depression is placed and numbness is felt so strongly, one’s body feels encased in stone. Also too, the depression brought on my numerous factors; a death, PTSD, another illness. Nothing is cut and dry.
For the most part, that is why families or people just don’t realize the magnitude of mental illness and depression blackness, and how finding solitude and finality in suicide the only answer. Who would wish one’s life away? Why would you when everyone else is enjoying theirs. Who would want to spend their life in an institution making bird houses in O.T.?
During my horrible years, my days were spent concocting plans for my next suicide attempt. Counting pills, place of exit, time etc. That just helped the time pass – nothing else to think about – no future. I was ill, I know. But I had a bunch of bozo pdocs, reminding me I was drug-resistant and pushing me on a gurney 3X a week for ECT. Did they help? NO. All I did was lose my memory – I’m lucky I am typing this now.
Deb
cherished79 // 19 August 2007 at 8:00 pm
In response to Ray, if I may, I do now have trust in the medical field - at least in my pdoc. He literally rescued me from the other idiots of medicine, turned the tables around, and put me on the meds I should have been on years before. I had lost faith - and so I should have - but this doctor came along and now my world has really opened up.
I really am one of the lucky ones - but there are many very caring psychiatrists out there, really interested in your well-being. And of course, there are others who are there for the 9-5 job. My meds are in place now and I am back to work full-time (after 9 years). I wish Ashley so much through all of this - you deserve it kiddo and without judgement and criticism. If it were cancer or heart disease you were fighting - we wouldn’t be challenging you, would we? I think not.
Deb
crazyasuka // 19 August 2007 at 8:30 pm
It’s funny how you posted this while I’m reading a book I’m loving.
It’s called “Why we get sick”. It sees every disease from an evolutionary point of view.
There’s a little section about mental illnesses. You should read it sometime.
It’s like, yes, depression makes you want to sit and stare at a wall the whole day. How can those genes survive if the human involved is not even interested in sex, meaning there would be no offspring. Wouldn’t the damaged genes be eliminated by natural selection?
So far it doesn’t talk about an unique reason and it doesn’t offer an amazing answer. I’m still trying to understand it and I’ll get back to you when I’m done reading this chapter.
ideas2words // 19 August 2007 at 11:32 pm
Thanks. I’ll give it a read.
Ray // 20 August 2007 at 1:46 am
ITW: if mental illness was the result of random environmental inputs, then there would be no correlation of the illness along ancestral lines.
R: I am speaking of random environmental inputs related with your ancestral lines. In millions of spermatozoa of a healthy person there would be a illness tendency percentage. I am not saying that crazyness comes from the day-you-were-conceived’s weather or some random natural event. Just roll the dice to discover the answer.
ITW: I am a fan of Rousseau, and I have no doubt that he would have had tremendous insight into the subtleties of evolution, but he proceeded Charles Darwin by 100 years. And, it was almost 10 years after Rousseau’s death when Georges Cuvier demonstrated that extinction was a fact of geological history (a fact rejected by his contemporaries and predecessors). Rouseau was therefore working with models of human behavior that had no concept of (1) the evolution process, (2) a true understanding of the fossil record, (3) the possibility of extinction of whole classes of species and niches within species, and (4) genetic predisposition.
R: I mentioned Rousseau as a referent to my hypothesis. He thought that man gets corrupted by society. I agree with that. It is the same with drug addicts, a percentage of people comes to this world with a tendency to addiction but does it imply that those people with finish their lifes in a rehab center? I guess not… some of them might fall into the hole by social circumstances while others not.
It’s the same than a person with depressive tendency. I am not saying that you wanted to be that, of course NOT, but i am absolutely sure that there is no effect without cause and probably there was a social circumstance in your life that fired the illness.
ITW: Lastly, when the pathophysiology of mental illness was discovered, psychiatrists the world over were not surprised at all. In their minds, major depression and bi-polar disorder had too many characteristics of a disease (in the medical, not colloquial sense) to not have some sort of pathology.
R: I agree. Simple Cause-Effect relationship. If you feel melancholic is because something in you makes your body makes you feel like that. But what do you believe is the trigger of “the-evil-something-that-causes-your-sadness”? You? A cell? An active event? a passive one? Don’t fall in the “Church of the Glial”. “If i am feeling happy is because the glial cells are working fine. Oh holy cells that live inside my brain, i am feeling sad. I know that is because of you!”.
anonymous // 13 October 2007 at 11:13 am
In response to the evolutionary process of natural selection (sexual selection, to be exact), it does not matter whether a gene leads to a disease where a symptom is loss of sexual interest. What matters is whether an individual can still produce fertile offspring. The genes don’t care if someone is interested, but if they are able.
ideas2words // 13 October 2007 at 6:06 pm
I was not talking about disinterest in sex, though that would have a similar effect; rather, I was talking about the unfortunate habit of dispatching oneself. Given even a small disadvantage in reproduction rates, negative characteristics will eventually be eradicated by evolution. That is, unless there is some other feature of the underlying mechanism that proferred that subpopulation an advantage that offest the disadvantage.
We should remember that evolution does not require zero reproduction, only an imbalance in reproduction rates. . .and a lot of time.
-i2w
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