Stranger in a strange land: an optimal-environments account of evolutionary mismatch

Morris, Rick

doi:10.1007/s11229-018-01915-x

Cited by 4 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…According to the evolutionary-mismatch hypothesis, mental disorders arise due to the mismatch between the modern-day environment and the environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness (Morris, 2018). The environment of evolutionary Adaptedness (EEA) defines the environment for which the human genome is adapted.…”

Section: The Evolutionary-mismatch Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 99%

Revitalisation - A Framework for Mental Health based on the Evolutionary-Mismatch Paradigm

Damm¹

2023

Preprint

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There is a high prevalence of mental disease in modern society. It will be argued upon further evaluation, that the state of the art therapies for mental disease: psychotherapy and drug therapy, which do not have an explanation for this widespread phenomena, might not be sufficient in counteracting it. This comes as they are neglecting environmental aspects, are overall only limited in efficacy and their theoretical foundations seems to lack validity. Therefore in order for the field of clinical psychology to advance a change of paradigm will be proposed here. One to a paradigm that gives an explanation for the high prevalence of mental disease, one that is taking account for environmental and lifestyle factors and one that is using evidence-based techniques. The evolutionary-mismatch hypothesis is proposed as the perfect candidate for this shift of paradigm. In this concept mental disorders are understood to be consequences of an environment and lifestyle, that is in mismatch with the Environment of evolutionary Adaptedness (EEA), the environment for which human genetics are adapted to. A framework for mental health will be presented that is based on this paradigm of evolutionary-mismatch, called revitalisation. In this framework mental disease will be understood as the result of an organism whose vitality, that is the ability of an organism to survive and thrive under the conditions it is placed upon, is diminished. The re-establishment or enhancement of the vitality of an organism shall therefore be the aim in mental health promotion. By trying to close the discrepancy between the EEA and the modern lifestyle and environment in implementing elements that appeared in the EEA and by implementing strategies to cope with unmodifiable mismatches adequately to reduce their harm. The article closes with the consideration of aspects that might be of especial importance for mental health from the evolutionary-mismatch perspective.

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Section: The Evolutionary-mismatch Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 99%

Revitalisation - A Framework for Mental Health based on the Evolutionary-Mismatch Paradigm

Damm¹

2023

Preprint

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“…The reference environment is usually the historical environment to which the unit was adapted. But other choices are possible - Morris ([2018]) suggests assessing mismatch with reference to an optimal environment (see Section 5). The utility function is usually biological fitness or some fitness surrogate (such as energetic efficiency).…”

Section: Vernacular Meaningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…"CC: evolutionary mismatch obtains when an organism O is in an actual environment Ea such that O's fitness is lower than it would be in an optimal environment Emf ." (Morris [2018])…”

Section: Morris 2018mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following Levins ([1968]), Morris states that "the optimal environment is the environment in which the organism's fitness is maximized: in other words, the optimal environment is that in which the organism's fitness is as high as it can possibly be." (Morris [2018], p. 1) An immediate problem is that this will classify almost all actual organisms as mismatched, because almost no organism lives in an optimal environment. For example, one limiting factor for plants is nitrogen.…”

Section: Morris 2018mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Morris is well aware of this problem, part of what he calls the "overbroadness objection" (Morris [2018], p. 17). He offers a thoughtful defense of what he recognises will seem an unintuitive consequence.…”

Section: Morris 2018mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The idea of mismatch in evolutionary medicine

Bourrat¹,

Griffiths²

2021

The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science

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Mismatch is a prominent concept in evolutionary medicine and a number of philosophers have published analyses of this concept. The word 'mismatch' has been used in a diversity of ways across a range of sciences, leading these authors to regard it as a vague concept in need of philosophical clarification. Here, in contrast, we concentrate on the use of mismatch in modelling and experimentation in evolutionary medicine. This reveals a rigorous theory of mismatch within which the term 'mismatch' is indeed used in several ways, not because it is ill-defined but because different forms of mismatch are distinguished within the theory. Contemporary evolutionary medicine has unified the idea of 'evolutionary mismatch', derived from the older idea of 'adaptive lag' in evolution, with ideas about mismatch in development and physiology derived from the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) paradigm. A number of publications in evolutionary medicine have tried to make this theoretical framework explicit. We build on these to present the theory in as simple and general a form as possible. We introduce terminology, largely drawn from the existing literature, to distinguish the different forms of mismatch. This integrative theory of mismatch captures how organisms track environments across space and time on multiple scales in order to maintain an adaptive match to the environment, and how failures of adaptive tracking lead to disease. Mismatch is a productive organising concept within this theory which helps researchers articulate how physiology, development and evolution interact with one another and with environmental change to explain health outcomes.

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The case of poor postpartum mental health: a consequence of an evolutionary mismatch – not of an evolutionary trade-off

Dahan¹

2023

Biol Philos

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Stranger in a strange land: an optimal-environments account of evolutionary mismatch

Cited by 4 publications

References 43 publications

Revitalisation - A Framework for Mental Health based on the Evolutionary-Mismatch Paradigm

Revitalisation - A Framework for Mental Health based on the Evolutionary-Mismatch Paradigm

The idea of mismatch in evolutionary medicine

The case of poor postpartum mental health: a consequence of an evolutionary mismatch – not of an evolutionary trade-off

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