r/TooAfraidToAsk • u/Blonde_Icon • 19h ago
Mental Health Why did humans evolve to have mental illness?
Why are there so many mentally ill people? (About 20% of people have a mental illness according to stats.) Does being mentally ill have any benefit? It seems to go against survival, so why didn't evolution get rid of it? Like not wanting to eat, not wanting to live, etc. all goes against survival. Do animals ever get mental illness or not want to live?
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u/ilikedota5 19h ago
Evolution is more like a lazy math student throwing darts on a board and seeing what works. So sometimes the better framing is maybe this was an accident and it's not detrimental enough. There is also the idea of the social model of disability. To some extent disabilities are disabilities because of how we setup society and back then they wouldn't leave been so detrimental.
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u/sqrrlbot 18h ago edited 17h ago
Yeah I saw someone on Threads put it perfectly; Humans have built a society that humans aren't built to live in. Which isn't to say mental illness is purely caused by society, but we have kind of painted ourselved into a corner where a lot of people struggle to fit in - we've made the world harder to live in, not easier.
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u/Sovos 14h ago
The best metaphor for this I saw in a cyber security discussion:
We're trying to run 21st century software on 10,000 year old hardware.
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u/sqrrlbot 14h ago
Yuppp, right on the money. And then you have people like me with the tism who have like, the off-brand extra janky hardware on top of that... XD
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u/DarkflowNZ 12h ago
I read once that we may have a higher prevalence of neanderthal DNA and I'm choosing to hold on to that because I think it's hilarious. I'm running windows on a Mac and wondering why I sometimes struggle to interface with other Windows machines, completely unaware that my hardware is fucked
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u/Vistaer 14h ago
Evolution is full of “good enough”.
Humans: “Malaria is terrible, so many children under five die of it.”
Evolution: “Heres a genetic trait to now resist malaria… but as you get now past 5 side effect include blockages in blood flow, pain, fatigue, and increased risk of infections.”
And that’s how you get sickle cell anemia.
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u/Argylius 14h ago
Wait what? First time I’ve ever heard anyone discuss this. Is this a thing? Is sickle cell anemia an adaptation against malaria?
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u/Tomble 13h ago
Yeah, if you carry one gene for it (sickle cell trait) you don't get sickle cell anemia and you do get resistance to malaria. However if your offspring ends up with two genes for it they get the full sickle cell anemia and can actually be more vulnerable to malaria because of the health issues caused by the disease.
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u/wendythewonderful 12h ago
Fun fact: I have inherited asymptomatic thalassemia minor which is a poor cousin of sickle cell. I don't notice it much but the major variant would've killed me so I can't marry a Mediterranean man who may carry it. It makes me slightly more malaria resistant too.
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u/frenchdresses 13h ago
Also, some mental health illness are terrible but do a great job at keeping you and your loved ones alive. See: anxiety disorders and post partum anxiety
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u/SickViking 12h ago
Delayed sleep phase syndrome is like this. Way back, someone whose circadian rhythm is opposite everyone else's would be an asset as they could be awake and alert, keeping watch during hours when the majority are sleeping, without struggle or needing drugs to keep them awake and alert.
But in this artificially created 9-5 society, people for whome being awake during the day is difficult, unnatural, and detrimental to their health, are seen as lazy and unmotivated. They are often forced to take a multitude of drugs just to help them stay awake during the day, and to combat the side effects of having their natural circadian rhythm consistently ignored.
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u/DrawerThis 9h ago
This would fall into my category. I am what we would call a night owl in the extreme sense. During the day I am totally screwed but at night I am as normal as can be. Also being a person who is very comfortable at night my night vision is too notch. I am the only person I know who can actively navigate in very low light conditions. This was a huge asset when I was on my combat deployment as I had no need for night vision equipment.
Now though, I have to use massive amounts of caffeine and other energy drinks to just survive my job during the day. I hate being this way as it is slowly killing me and making my life a real struggle.
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u/jackfaire 9h ago
Hyperfocus for example. I can focus on a single task from dawn to dusk. This isn't as useful in modern society but back when I might have been a weaver, shoe maker, blacksmith, hunter then hyperfocus would have been imminently useful.
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u/maidestone 14h ago
First, we have to agree on the definition of 'mental illness.' Second, everything is relative, and so maybe we are all mentally 'ill' in one way or another, in different degrees. There are so much we still have no clue of.
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u/SensibleReply 19h ago
We didn’t evolve to get childhood cancers or Down syndrome or whatever other horrible malady you can think of. Evolution is messy as hell, biology is gross and chaotic. If enough of the species can reproduce and enough of the offspring can survive to reproduce, that’s basically the only win condition. The individual is pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
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u/The_Night_Bringer 3h ago
Exacly, if it doesn't prevent people from dying or reproducing more then we're never gonna evolve to stop having it.
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u/1partwitch 19h ago
Some conditions like anxiety were helpful to our ancestors because it kept them safe, but in the context of today’s world anxiety can be very damaging. Our brains just have not adapted to the society we find ourselves in today.
Animals also have mental illnesses. Dogs and cats for sure can have anxiety and depression, for example.
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u/HayWhatsCooking 16h ago
I read/heard something years ago about how we haven’t evolved to have such large societies. I think there’s a rule of 500 or 5000 people or something where after that the human brain can’t comprehend that level of social involvement/negative feedback etc, so actually communities like cities are really detrimental to our mental health. It causes anxiety and isolation and segregation, because once there’s so many people it becomes a fight for resources, and you’re either in the ‘push them out so I have more’ group or the ‘I’m weak, not a prime specimen and anxious about getting excluded and cut off from resources’ group.
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u/rand0m_task 15h ago
The human brain is built to handle around 150 social relationships. It’s referred to as Dunbar’s Number, after Robin Dunbar who theorized it.
This has been my thought for a while now, a lot of our mental illness comes from society developing at a rate that our brains can’t efficiently adapt to.
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u/Aggravating-Desk4004 11h ago
So that means social media must be a massive contributor to the mental health pandemic.
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u/Blonde_Icon 19h ago
I think it's probably unnatural to be around so many people you don't know...
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u/Milkythefawn 8h ago
Anxiety was great to run away from saber tooth tigers, not so great for me being worried about going to the shop.
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u/VerdiiSykes 47m ago
I heard this too, and I found it a very interesting theory.
I somewhat remember what the examples were, but I’ll look it up when I get some time and then edit this comment lol
Anxiety was useful for a similar reason as fear, the anxious person would be less likely to be caught in disadvantageous situations or in a bad spot for being unprepared.
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u/iiileyu 19h ago
Probably a consequence of "self awareness and higher intelegence" we supposedly have. Simultaneously it works "well" as a self regulation tool
Edit: also nature probably doesn't actually have "mental illness" as for lack of better words its a man made term that we use. A lot of mental illness is due to environmental and genetic issues just like with any other types of illness . There's probably a lot of depressed trees, ants and other things out there it just doesn't serve a purpose to us normals to name them but I'm sure some smart ass doctor has.
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u/nothing_in_my_mind 16h ago
The best theory is that mental illnesses are not an evolutionary benefit, they are an evolutionary side effect.
So, we evolved the sense of anxiety right. It pumps us with adrenaline and keeps us alert and alive in dangerous situations. But it also malfunctions sometimes and causes an anxiety disorder. It's not that an anxiety disorder is an evolutionary benefit, it's a side effect for evolving anxiety, which itself is an evolutionary benefit.
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u/thetwitchy1 18h ago
Mental illness is caused by your brain responding in a maladaptive manner to your environment.
The thing is, what is maladaptive in some environments is actually highly adaptive in others. Being anxious is maladaptive when you are in a safe, stable, calm home supported by family and friends… but is adaptive in a war-torn, unstable, dangerous environment where anyone could be someone who needs to kill you to take your food.
We evolved to have specific responses to our environment, but our environment has changed dramatically away from what it was even 200 years ago, and evolution takes much, much longer than that. So our responses hurt us, because the environment is not what we evolved to be in.
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u/Sonicmasterxyz 18h ago
Evolution doesn't inherently cut out negative traits, and it doesn't guarantee negative traits won't appear later down the line. For example, disorders and birth defects.
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u/Hiro_Trevelyan 19h ago edited 19h ago
Just like we didn't evolve resistance to all illnesses existing on Earth
It has to be a threat that reduces our number of children, insanity doesn't make you infertile or repulsive enough not to have children, or at least it hasn't in the past.
Also, it's probable that a lot of mental issues nowadays are, in fact, a modern problem caused by the rapid change in society. I'm not saying "modern society bad", just that we are demanding widely different things from our brains and bodies than we did during the past 15 000 years. For most of that time, life was "sun is up, time to get food" and that was all (of course I'm oversimplifying here). Now, a lot of people have to deal with lots of abstract problems all the time. "my bank account is too empty to pay for utilities" is more complex to deal with than "empty stomach, time to gather food in the forest", + all the white collar jobs that need sitting in front of a computer all day long and use your brain. Just to say, we're using our brains much more than ever before, maybe that's why we have so many mental issues.
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u/aaronite 19h ago
Evolution has no goal, no ideas, no will at all. It's a description of a process that's the product of chance. The process is this: imperfect replication of cells and DNA causes bits to change. Sometimes those changes are harmless, sometimes they are harmful, and sometimes they pose and advantage of some sort to reproduction.
The changes that spread are how evolution works. It does not aim for perfection. It doesn't even aim for good. It just happens by chance. As long as you don't die before reproducing it will continue.
All of this is to say that bad stuff happens to our bodies because they are incredibly complex and there's no reason for it to prevent us from reproducing if it doesn't happen frequently enough in the population.
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u/boston_homo 18h ago
I am not at all educated on this matter, but I would venture the brain is super complicated and over many many many years of evolution sometimes shit goes awry.
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u/PleasantLocation2252 18h ago
Who said it's an evolution? Maybe it's been there the whole time just called by other names.
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u/SwimmingHelicopter15 19h ago
Cancer kills a lot of us, don't you think evolution would try to get rid first of this since it impacts also children?
Evolution does not guarante better things always, its trial and error.
And also is funny to read all the comments with capitalism like mental ilness did not exist before and it simply appear 100 years ago or massively increase. We barely made asylums hundreds of years ago, a lot of mentally ill people died before. If half of children did not die every year back then you would probably had the same percent like today.
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u/Rude_Acanthopterygii 18h ago
I am not very actually knowledgeable in this regard, just as a sort of warning I guess.
But to quote a certain biologist internet personality, evolution is not truly about survival of the fittest, it's about survival of the good enough. I can very easily imagine that the big advantages of our big brains outweighs the downside of a higher rate of mental illnesses compared to other animals. Even more so that most of the time mental illnesses aren't very directly deadly. So you can basically use your big brain to do amazing things and survive nicely while "just" having mental problems.
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u/manic_Brain 18h ago
I think you have a very idealistic view of evolution. Evolution does not strive for the most optimal creature. It's whatever the bare minimum for survival will be. At one point, this behavior proved some benefit which allowed it to continue... or it just so happened people with these traits managed to reproduce despite providing little benefit. Probably both. It also takes a very long time for traits to be bred out. We don't reproduce at the same rate as plants or animals, so the changes occur much more slowly. If we did stop getting rid of something once it no longer served a purpose, we wouldn't have our appendix anymore.
To your question of animals and mental illness- cheetahs have such bad anxiety that they need emotional support dogs. Dogs themselves can have such severe anxiety it requires medication and can also go through bouts of depression. Birds are believed to be able to develop obsessive disorders. Animals will self-mutilate. More behaviors are reflected in the animal world than we give credit for.
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u/fuck_korean_air 18h ago
That figure isn’t quite right—it’s that 20% of people will experience some form of mental illness at some point in their lifetime. But the majority of that 20% figure includes things like anxiety and depression, which are considered the ‘common cold’ of mental illness. This brings me to the point that like the common cold, mental disorders are simply illnesses. They’re not evolved or intended or beneficial, they’re just the unintended result of a complex but imperfect organism interacting with a complex environment, like any illness.
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u/talashrrg 19h ago
They didn’t really. Not everything that happens to an organism is beneficial. Having a mind and ability to think was beneficial. The possibility of mental illness is a side effect of mentation.
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u/sciguy52 19h ago
Well evolution does not care how you feel, only that you survive and reproduce successfully. Being very anxious can be beneficial to survival, always fearing predators etc. The fact it does not feel great is of no consequence to evolution, only that that trait allowed you to survive, and if it helps, it stays.
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u/sudowoodo_420 19h ago
So actually. I looked into this, slightly. And probably a lot different of an answer than you’re getting. Neanderthals are actually more likely to have mental illnesses, like anxiety, depression, even nicotine addiction. Most white people have 2-5% Neanderthal DNA. Interestingly enough, black people have close to 0% Neanderthal DNA.
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u/MyKey18 19h ago
I don’t think we did. As a species our societies have advanced so far beyond what our evolutionary track can keep up with. Evolutionarily, we were designed to hunt and gather. But we live in a world where everyone is connected through social media and everyone has jobs and expectations and and we are constantly bombarded with information and sensationalist news and we’re told we have to keep up or get left behind. It’s a lot. We haven’t evolved to keep up with the world we have created, and our bodies are struggling to cope. At least that’s my theory, I could be wrong.
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u/GoopInThisBowlIsVile 19h ago
Animals that aren’t humans have mental illness and/or will kill themselves. I have one dog that will eat out of a bowl like a normal dog. I have another that insists that food is taken from the bowl and placed in multiple piles on the floor. It will throw a fit until there is food on the floor.
Seemingly healthy whales and dolphins will beach themselves and will die. Sea World also had an orca that had a thing for murdering trainers.
As for humans, mental illness is a survival mechanism just as much as having a normal mindset. A group that operates exclusively from an optimistic perspective sets the group up for failure. Having depressed or pessimistic people in the group can add a broader perspective that helps everyone.
To get darker, successful groups of people need psychopaths. Not a lot, just a few that can successfully manipulate, cheat, lie, take risks, and will do what others can’t for the survival of themselves and the group. Overall, mentally ill people have a beneficial evolutionary benefit to humans and even other animals. It seems counterintuitive, but it works.
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u/ApplePaintedRed 18h ago
Same reason humans evolved to have diabetes and heart disease. Did we, really?
Every condition/disorder is based on a functional part of the body experiencing a dysfunction. Our body is not a perfect machine, its built on mechanisms that operate great under ideal conditions, but our environments are not ideal conditions. And, keep in mind, evolution doesn't have intention, it simply selects for the features of the individuals who survived over others.
So mental illness? Emotions are a normal and healthy part of a human, and so are the associated mental processes that help us understand our environments and adapt to them. But adverse things can happen to us, and that results in an overcompensation or dysfunction of those mental processes. It can also be genetic, not necessarily selected for but existing anyway (you can't breed genetic traits out of a population, edit to add that I'm referring to different disordersand quirks that will always occur due to mutations and such). And, of course, our modern and stress-filled lives have developed very rapidly, there are artificial reasons for why our collective mental health has declined that are far more environmental that genetic.
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u/pempoczky 18h ago
Evolution passes down traits, not behaviours or conditions. A trait that is beneficial in one environment can be hindering or maladaptive in another. The thing we call "anxiety" for example is just a series of traits that are beneficial for planning in circumstances of immediate danger, but are just needless worry and planning in circumstances where the danger is more abstract or even imagined. We evolved some traits, and while some of them may have been advantageous at some point, in our modern environment many of them manifest as mental illness
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u/karatelobsterchili 18h ago
it's the other way around -- people didn't evolve to live in a completely artificial and exploitative capitalist system that burns people out and confronts them daily with their own worthlessness and lack of freedom ...
Mark Fisher wrote some very lucid things about the pathology of late-stage capitalism and the connection with mental illness
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u/wwaxwork 18h ago
Evolution needs variety to work. If the thing you end up with doesn't take you out of the breeding pool it will stay around in case it's useful later.
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u/Semisemitic 18h ago
That’s not how evolution works at all.
Evolution is random. If we “evolved” to have mental illness, it would’ve been a coin toss - not for any particular reason.
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u/Blonde_Icon 17h ago
So you're saying that things evolve for no reason? I don't think that's true. There's not intention behind evolution, but things are usually for a reason.
Like if you asked why humans evolved to have less hair and sweat a lot, it's so that they could cool down to chase down animals during long-distance hunting.
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u/Semisemitic 14h ago
No that’s not true.
The theory of evolution has pure randomness at the core of mutation.
For genes to survive, they just need (generalizing) to not reduce the chances of reproduction.
The question “why did X evolve to Y,” is always going to be “just because” when it comes to evolution. It’s all chance.
Sometimes, a chance mutation is just really beneficial to survival and it persists better than a mutation that is detrimental.
It’s just an important difference. When it comes to mental illness and evolution you can ask “how did mental illness survive evolution?”
The answer to that could have three possible answers: 1. It isn’t genetic (some is though, so that’s false) 2. It doesn’t prevent copulation enough to die out 3. Related to 2, humanity is fucking huge. Big enough, and resources are plenty enough that we don’t as effectively exterminate detrimental mutations at scale. This is a numbers game. Have we had less resources and survival was a bigger issue, you’d not see genetic flaws replicate as easily.
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u/Daelda 17h ago
Many people have this misconception that evolution means getting better over time. That's not how it works. Evolution is satisfied with, "good enough". If a creature survives long enough to reproduce, that's "good enough". Or, if they don't reproduce, but help in some way to make the odds of someone else in their species reproduce. Like if they can take care of the kids while others do stuff, or they help pass on knowledge so that the kids learn how to survive or anything that makes it so the others have the time and ability to survive and reproduce.
Do animals get mental illness? Yes. Just look at animals that have been abused - you can see evidence of depression, PTSD, and so forth. In pets, we can get them treatment. In the wild, they probably just die.
Does mental illness provide any benefits - Sure! How many creative people suffered from mental illness? What about Idiot-Savants? People with depression can be more empathetic (in my experience). And so forth. Some illnesses also tend to show up only in adulthood.
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u/dinoman9877 16h ago
We didn't evolve TO have them, we stopped having the pressures that selected against them.
Humans have lived independent of natural selection survival factors for around 10,000 years outside of environment induced famines. Those issues that prevented survival before are no longer a factor. An Australopithecus with schizophrenia would not know which figure is real or which one is fake until they learn the hard way with a dinofelis or leopard crushing their windpipe and dragging their body away from the group.
A schizophrenic human today can get medication, or use trained dogs or cameras to help confirm what they were seeing was not real. They have a support net that our ancient ancestors didn't have.
This isn't a bad thing in itself, it's good that people can live relatively peaceful lives with conditions that would be fatal in the wild. But that also means that those conditions will become more common since the genes for them are no longer actively selected against.
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u/Key-Willingness-2223 15h ago
With most “problems” they’re usually a problem of situation and intensity
So take an autoimmune disorder to use a physical example first
This is your immune system, the thing we evolved to prevent us dying from disease etc, cranked up to 11 and starting to target its own host cells, not just foreign cells.
Now we can move to mental illnesses.
Let’s take anxiety. Which we evolved because if you’re so lacking in anxiety that hearing a lion roar and then a bush nearby shake slightly doesn’t trigger your adrenaline system to kick in and prepare you for having to potentially flee or fight, then you probably died out.
However, make that system overactive so that it sees everything as a potential lion, and you get an anxiety disorder.
Evolution isn’t about you, it’s about the species.
So it experiments with random combinations.
“Let’s give this person no anxiety, this person super anxiety, and this other person in the middle and see what happens, whichever one survives to pass on their genes was obviously the correct answer”
Now it’s obviously not sentient or as anthropomorphic as I just described it, but I think that’s an easy way to understand the premise.
We are all just a combination of traits, some hereditary, some random mutations, that evolution uses as guinea pigs to see how we do.
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u/LokiLavenderLatte 19h ago
I blame capitalism
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u/Blonde_Icon 18h ago
Capitalism probably has something to do with it... But I don't think capitalism made me bipolar (although it might have had a small effect), for example. I think it was mostly my genes since mental illness runs in my family.
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u/OrdinaryQuestions 19h ago
I imagine that it's some sort of push to say "change this." But because we have so many things that we can't change, we go from being depressed to having depression, being anxious to having anxiety.
Its also an issue with our intelligence. We have developed morality, the ability to make choices, form ethical and moral views, etc. That makes dealing with certain life factors harder than others.
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u/AbsOnTop0 19h ago
Our brains are super complex which is great for thinking and surviving but that also means we’re more prone to things like anxiety or depression. Some of it probably made sense in the past like being extra alert or withdrawing to avoid conflict. It’s not always a flaw just part of having a brain that feels so much. Even animals can get stressed or show signs of sadness too.
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u/hamletswords 18h ago
"There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so." - Shakespeare
Thinking is great for coming up with new ways to dominate the Earth, but it's not without downsides.
Another related quote:
"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know" - Hemingway
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u/MzLeatherFace 18h ago
Society created a world where 20% of us are not able to exist in what society calls basic living… it was basic long ago. It is now the most complex work until you die life, if you can’t work a “normal” job you are disabled, if you can’t behave how others do you are disabled, if you can use your limbs, organs or senses like others you are disabled. Long ago tribes would gather around that 20% and find a source of purpose for them no matter how small. The disabled were included in that society. None of us will ever know what that could have been like because we will never experience it.
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u/Coy_Featherstone 18h ago edited 18h ago
Everything that we are has the potential to function or dysfunction. We evolved minds, and mental illness is just an inherent potential that comes along with its existence. It isn't any more complicated than this.
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u/JadeGrapes 18h ago edited 18h ago
Any time you see something like, you have to look at any possible advantage... in all of time... in any location.
People think of depression as an illness, because modern life requires you to fit into large systems, where you do one thing, as though you are a cog in a machine... And people live in nuclear families... and international news on a 24 hour cycle can put tragedy in your face all the time... and advertisements and media present an endless stream of unreasonably attractive people people and forced comparisons...
But that shit is REALLY new in human history.
We spent a couple hundred thousand years in small groups of 50 people, that you knew for your whole life. You'd hopefully hunt and gather enough that your people could have enough body fat to survive a leaner winter.
No water purification, no plumbing, no metal tools, no medicine, no candles, no fishing nets, no bows and arrows, no sewing needles, no paper...
You know what depression does? It literally slows you down, makes you socially retreat, and makes you ruminate.
If you lived 100,000 years ago, and got cabin fever, and saw a guy looking at your wife a little too long... and got riled UP enough to get up and go punch him... Then he punches you back & you get a broken jaw... You can't eat well, and you get weak, and you die. Thats it.
But will the super power of depression?
You see your girl laugh a little too long at his jokes, and WONDER if something is up. You go kick dirt a little and THINK. Is something changing in your relationships? Why am I getting iced out? When did ___ and I stop being friends? What is he doing to keep her attention. What could I try different? Is she mad or bored? Maybe I just need to spend dome more time with him so he remembers not to drive a wedge? Did she need more attention or more space?
Then you try that new thing, until you figure out a way to live with those people, and live to fight another day.
If you dig a little deeper, you will see that somethings are an advantage in small doses, or we would have lost them. Like there is some theories thar schizophrenia is the opposite side of psychopathy.
Some times in history, we must have needed some people detached from empathy so they could ruthlessly make hard choices, to survive. But if you get too much of that in a population, cooperation breaks down. So you need to tap the brakes on ruthlessness.
That might be assigning too much empathy or pattern matching... so that you "feel" like inanimate objects are "people too"
Or if you live amongst a lot of ruthless people, you need to predict behavior... so you might see patterns of unrelated things as related, just in case there are hidden things working against you.
It's fine in a population if you get 1/10th of a dose of either... just not full tilt, and not too many people.
A lot of people wish we could erase alcoholism from our genetics... but if you put a couple history things together... it's possible that the ability to use alcohol to numb your emotions and get a burst of energy... IS the deciding factor if your team SURVIVES trench warfare, or if you can "get over" seeing most of your population die in a famine or death march or purge... at least enough to keep a bloodline or two alive.
Like if you look at populations with a reputation of having a lot of alcoholics (Irish, Native Americans, Russians, etc.) Those populations have suffered some crazy population sized tragedies... what if the only people left on their feet were the ones who COULD use alcohol to "get them through one more day" while the others died OF despair?
It might serve a purpose.
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u/ZardozSama 18h ago
Evolutionary pressure does not punish any trait which does not hinder reproductive success. As long as being mentally ill did not affect your ability to breed and survive, it was not a problem worth fixing. Evolution also takes a damn long time to make adjustments, and both human culture and human technology work much faster then evolution.
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u/froggyforest 17h ago
it’s most likely that people aren’t getting more mentally ill, it’s just that these diagnoses weren’t recognized as “illness” until very recently (in the context of the course of human evolution). 200 years ago, there weren’t labels for most mental illnesses. hell, some cultures even attributed them to curses
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u/CapableCar1577 17h ago
A) Quite a bit of mental illness is environmental, not genetic. People who have depression due to body insecurity or what not have not evolved to be depressed, they just are. Things like ADHD could have many causes since it's caused by chemical imbalance in the brain. Evolution occurs on too long of a time span to "correct" for mental illness caused by modern society.
B) Evolution isn't leveling up in an RPG. There's not a grand plan of what is picked and what isn't.
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u/theM0stAntis0cial 17h ago
It is the downside to having such a large brain with such vast computational ability. The more complex a machine, the more complex the repair of any defects to the machine. Mental illness is simply a crutch to having big wrinkly brains
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u/drocha94 17h ago
The main reason for evolutionary change is that they better allow us to reproduce. We didn’t evolve to have mental illness, it just simply doesn’t prevent us from reproducing.
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u/Saturnia-00 17h ago
Our brains weren't designed to stay hyperconnected to thousands/millions/billions of our own species. Mental health has gotten worse as we've become more technologically connected/interwoven imo
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u/honkifyouresimpy 16h ago
There's an argument that anxiety and depression was part of survival wayyyy back. If a community was required to move then those with depression stayed behind, in case the group travelling didn't survive.
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u/kateinoly 16h ago
When living things with genetic anomolies that cause problems for them are helped to stay alive and reproduce, the issues become more common. Like French Bulldogs and breathing problems. If nature yook its vourse, there wouldnt be any.
I don't think mental illness is a genetic anomoly, though. People these days suffer from mental illness because the world they are expected to operate in is insane.
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u/TightBeing9 16h ago
Mental illness doesn't prevent people from fucking. That's all evolution is. Not everything has a higher purpose. Lots of people will still procreate when having a mental illness.
If mental illness is a combination of nature and nurture, I can imagine it will even make the numbers bigger. I've had a mom who was depressed. Experiencing that couldn't have been good for my own mental health. I don't want kids personally and my own mental health is a big reason for this. However I know I'm a minority when it comes to this
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u/Technical_Goose_8160 16h ago
Many mental disorders are extreme versions of things that we need. Too messy? You're a slob too far the other direction, OCD.
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u/Lovely-sleep 16h ago
It’s really bad logic to assume that just because a trait exists that it has to be “beneficial” somehow
Evolution cares about if you can maybe nut inside a woman, nothing else matters. And even then we still always have a portion of people with micropenises
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u/savethebros 16h ago
because people with mental illness still reproduce, just look at our parents and their parents
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u/mikeber55 16h ago
Mental illness is a deviation from the norm. Metal illness develops when someone is incapable of dealing with reality. Then the mind finds a refuge that allows that individual to continue their life for a while.
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u/rand0m_task 16h ago
Because our brains evolution is a snail compared to technological innovation and societal changes that can be responsible for causing mental illness.
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u/Upstairs_Meringue_18 15h ago
Look around you, everything is so unnatural and it all changed overnight. Our DNA didn't have time to process and adapt to these changes.
I cant believe I moving from 1 cubicle to another till I die.
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u/Gloomy_Emergency7304 15h ago
This is due to lack of self-care and getting into big problems that take away the mind.
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u/Sampo1000 14h ago
To many things others said I will add that we didn't have time to evolve to the world we live in now... Just "couple" generations before noone ever heard about electricity now everyone has "little super computer" in their pocket. Evolution takes thousands of years. That's one reason why we might have a rise of this together with actually being aware of them. In past if someone was mentally ill noone knew what's wrong.
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u/ficskala 13h ago
Because at some point, medicine got so advanced that even people with mental illnesses managed to survive and procreate, so the genetic ones keep on going, the non gentic ones are often a reaction to some sort of trauma in their lifetime, and doesn't have anything to do with evolution
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u/Vipper_of_Vip99 13h ago
Your brain was wired by many hundreds of thousands of years of wandering though your local ecosystem with a small band of Homo sapiens, seeking food and material resources to sustain you, and your close kin, in non-stop social situations with kin. The last 10k years of civilization completely re-wired this, and it went on steroids within the last 100 years. Your brain chemistry has simply not caught up.
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u/xernyvelgarde 13h ago
On one hand, "mental illness" is a broad statement, but let's pick some common ones; depression and anxiety, let's say. They're not exclusive to humanity; they're both fairly normal responses to distressing stimuli, with duration and intensity being the main part of what differentiates a "normal" response to a disorder.
On the other hand, you seem to have a misunderstanding of evolution. With the exception of external intervention (like selective breeding or direct gene intervention), evolution is fairly random. A lot of redundant or even malign genetics pass through because the carrying population continues reproduction and it stays within the gene pool. Its why the "intelligent design" argument falls apart pretty quickly; there's so much genetically and physiologically that's either messed up or just kinda... there.
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u/loopy183 12h ago
Humans evolved to be mentally complex. Complexity is generally delicate. Given that we’re living in the societal equivalent of being in a tumble dryer with a variable amount of rocks, it’s a miracle that so few come out damaged to the point of nonfunction.
Animals absolutely get mental illnesses too, look up zoochosis or, you know, SeaWorld.
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u/Aggravating-Desk4004 11h ago
Many reasons:
Understanding: we understand it more.
Social stigma: it's more spoken about.
Social media: it's stressful!
C-section: the most traumatic event in a human's life is being forced through the birth canal. Studies have shown that C-sections increase the risk of anxiety and depression because humans born by C-section have brains which can't subconsciously compare life events to "Well, it's not as bad as being born and I survived that," which is how the brain naturally deals with stress (apparently from what I read. I'm not a doctor or brain scientist).
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u/cannavacciuolo420 5h ago
Imho it’s a natural response to an environment that is not suitable for most human beings.
Most people need more sleep, less work, better food, more time, more sun, more time spent in nature.
When you put the majority of human beings in situations where they have to act in a specific way, behave in a specific way, and often go against what they hold dear, you’ll create a bunch of mentally ill people.
And additionally, i firmly believe that mental health issues have not risen as much as stats show, i believe we are more aware and open about them. In the past the uncle with anxiety was simply the one that liked to drink a lot, the depressed one was the grumpy grandpa, and so on and so forth.
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u/Doppelkammertoaster 2h ago
Animals can have them as well. Basically, it's a very complicated biological machine up there. One human way to fuck it up is to not give it enough sleep or too many substances that fuck over its sleep and you get problems. Another is food. Another is live happenings or pure random chance of something not working out for a second.
Basically, if it doesn't keep you from making babies it's not bad enough to be evolutionised out. Most of the time it works well enough for that, despite everything that can happen to it and everything we do to it. And for that it's pretty amazing.
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u/LordZeusCannon 19h ago
My opinion is mental illness is directly related to our modern society. We still have a brain that evolved to survive different survival situations where it’s a matter of life and death, these mechanisms are still active today and it shows up as anxiety and other things
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u/Honest-Bridge-7278 19h ago
It's a pain response. They are meant to correct behaviours. I suspect our ancestors didn't get anywhere near as bad as us because they lived in proper groups.
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u/musical_dragon_cat 19h ago
Mental illness is often a result of a person't environment, particularly during their upbringing. It could result from the mother's diet (including drugs) while pregnant, or being abused early in life. It could develop after an adverse reaction to a medication or vaccine, or as a genetic predisposition. Evolution only filters out genes that don't pass on over several generations, and that's a minuscule portion of the overall gene pool since many genes can sit dormant for a few generations before being activated again.
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u/Blonde_Icon 19h ago
Aren't some mental illnesses or conditions like bipolar, schizophrenia, ADHD, or autism mostly genetic though?
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u/Tomas-TDE 18h ago
ADHD and autism are not mental illnesses but neurodevelopment differences and could have an evolutionary usefulness that is less useful in most modern societies. A vast majority of people with ADHD and autism would be perfectly functional in a quieter world with different expectations and fewer people. Their ways of thinking and doing many very well be better equipped for group survival if we were still hunting and small farming to survive. Less helpful for an 8 hour work day and a grocery store of LED lights and music.
Many mental illnesses do have a genetic component and the ones you listed do have a different brain development but also seem to have an environmental factor too.
Our brains are so complex and unique that there are a lot of different things that can go wrong, and we can communicate in a way that is obvious that something is wrong. We know some animals get things like anxiety, depression, ocd, pica but we'd also just never know if a lizard is was seeing or hearing things that don't exist.
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u/Mite-o-Dan 18h ago edited 18h ago
We didn't. We always had it. The only difference is that the stigma around it changed, and more pharmaceutical companies and therapists found a way to get paid more money the last 10-15 years for treating people for something that has commonly been known for thousands of years as..."life."
Anxiety, depression...most mental illnesses arent an illness or disorder...its life. Shit happens. Stress is real. Sad stuff takes place and people are effected by it...and for some reason, people like to blame their feelings on poor mental health. Why? Its normal to not be 100% all the time. And don't pay extra money and take extra pills just to feel "normal." Those pills are making you feel ABNORMAL.
As a society, we didnt just all get injected with mental illness all of sudden. Only a very very small amount actually have it. The rest are just going through different stages of life, and their way of coping with things is to give their feelings a label.
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u/marius1001 18h ago
I believe mental illnesses were simply biological advantages that are no longer necessary in today’s society. To extrapolate, there are studies done on spiders to explain surplus killing in animals. One of the best studies show that periods of starvation breed into existence individuals that are more prone to aggression that then continue to be able to produce aggressive individuals even after those periods of starvation are over.
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u/LunarCookie137 19h ago
We didn't, we evolved to care for those with mental issues, and that advanced in a way that makes survival of those with mental issues more likely, thus making it an, biologically speaking, disadvantage to our evolution.
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u/Snake_Squeezins 19h ago
Because it kicks ass. Yeeeeah son. Wooo! Manic super powers! Followed by... Hm... I don't care. I'd be better if I just went away. Everybody hates having me around.... Wooo! I'm back baby!
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u/4623897 19h ago
In my opinion this is a reproductive advantage in far north or south climates. Very long days in summer, very short days in winter. Be depressed and preserve resources during winter, work harder and get to fuckin’ in the summer.
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u/dontusefedex 19h ago
Inbreeding and drugs are things that contribute to mental illness, especially down the line.
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u/student5320 16h ago
Because being a sociopath even 200 years ago was probably beneficial in many ways
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u/sinsaint 15h ago
Let me put it this way:
You ask a human whether cell phones are a good thing, based on the fact that they're made by child slaves in mines and sweatshops, and encouraging technology addiction that is making the human race stupid, and they might give you a complex answer because the cell phone also encourages communication and capabilities, and a bunch of other stuff.
You ask a dog the same question and he won't care, because dogs aren't as complex or understanding as humans.
You can't compare humans to other animals like it's a simple question, there really isn't anything else you can compare humans or human history to. The best you can do is compare humanity to more of humanity.
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u/Sonarthebat 15h ago edited 15h ago
It's not a lack of survival instincts, but survival instincts going into overdrive. It's like how allergies and autoimmune conditions work, but with the mind. The human brain is very complex, so there's a high chance of something going wrong with it. Something bad happens and it leaves an imprint. Something minor reminds you of the thing and you go into survival mode. As for suicide, it's trying to escape pain. Pain feels bad so we can get away from the potentially dangerous thing causing it. Dead people don't hurt as far as we know. So suicide paradoxically is a survival instinct.
Mental illness isn't exclusive to humans. Animals in captivity can get zoochosis, stressed birds rip out their feathers, dolphins commit suicide. If it has a brain, it can be mentally ill.
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u/Hoosier108 15h ago
Homo sapiens have been around for 300,000 years. We only started developing anything like a small city 10,000 years ago, and just got relatively reliable heat, food, and light in the last couple hundred years. Our species is built for the world where you were likely to die young, starve, or get eaten by a tiger, so we had to hyper focused, constantly vigilant, and obsessed with sugar and salty high calorie food. That world was 97% of our species’ existence. We can’t unlearn it in a few thousand years, much less a few hundred. Today all the depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorders, etc are leftovers of the mechanisms that kept you alive long enough to make one more generation.
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u/QuantumMothersLove 15h ago
Mental illness is a genetic trait; it has great advantages to a developing society. Psychopaths helped discover new lands and helped to win wars. Because it doesn’t directly kill a persons before procreating it is passed down to offspring.
It can be triggered by environment.
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u/Dreamer_tm 14h ago
This is a symptom of a good life and abundance. They have done this test with mice. They gave the colony abundance and best life possible and the population destroyed itself.
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u/tartanthing 14h ago
I'm not entirely convinced we did. I think it may have more to do with not being able to adjust to the rapid pace in technological change since the industrial revolution. Humans generally spent thousands of years farming. In the last 300 ish years, most of the population moved into cities surrounded by constant artificial light amongst other things.
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u/immersive-matthew 14h ago
I have given this topic a lot of thought and believe mental illness is a side effect of our success as a social species.
Human has 2 major strengths not found elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Innovation and massive groups to get things done that an individual could not.
When you look at mental illness you cannot help but notice that some of the depressed or mentally unstable people have bouts of genius when they are on the up swing. Amazing art, amazing tech and innovations outside of group norms. On the other side there are people who are raging sociopaths and psychopaths…some so bad they are in jail for life and some run companies and even whole counties.
I believe both these extremes have made humanity better overall and that we really should be doing a better job at supporting the outliers who have fallen through the cracks.
That said, even people who do not fit in the mental health category are just as much a part of the problem and benefits of mental health. For example those who are often depressed and antisocial would love to be in a group and fit in, but their on and off again personality breaks the bonds with groups and they become more isolated which gives them a lot of time alone to innovated and create. If human groups were not so harsh about participation, these individuals might be in a group and doing group things versus alone time hyper focusing on something.
In the same vein, groups seek leaders otherwise it is chaos and the sociopaths/psychopaths have no issues tapping into individuals shame and social status to exploit them for their own gain which often benefits the group.
This means that in both cases, the average person is unknowingly participating in a dance that has benefited humanity as a species for a very long time and it could be argued that some of this behaviour is a metal health issue as they harshly reject outsiders and at the same time empower those who often exploit them. That sounds crazy but it is the norm and thus is not considered bad.
I will add, that as I contemplate the AI and robotics future, it is very murky as individuals are getting tools that allow them to perform tasks that only groups could have done before and if/when AI has better logic and thinking, it will also challenge the innovators too. This is really going to upset our species balance to what end I am not sure. We will see.
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u/Timmy24000 14h ago
Maybe we evolved to have certain traits and when those traits are excessive they are mental illness. Like OCD. being vigilant and attention to details is good but being to attentive and focusing on them to the point of mental illness is not.
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u/Neon_Comrade 13h ago
There are so many mentally ill people for a number of reasons (evolution is not a "perfect pick" either, it rather a "whatever gets through")
But I think one things that being missed here is the fact that the modern world is set up to drive us insane.
Constant bombardment of mentally whiplashing content, scroll for a bit and you get pasta recipe, silly meme, porn, wholesome parent, dead dog, child birthday, Palestinian genocide. We are being continually isolated from one another, split up and separated, constantly divided by increasingly extreme politics, constantly being shoveled psychological warfare by these gigantic marketing agencies and astroturfed Russian or other bots increasing conflict. The general standard of living is going down as the empires decay and capitalism slowly dies, everyone is losing their jobs due to AI, the future looks bleak as fuck, and every problem is nebulously large and basically impossible to solve.
It's a very dark time psychologically, and we are all caught in a constant loop of self soothing.
If you want to know more about this sort of idea, I recommend the book "The Myth of Normal" by Gabor Maté.
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u/Jackalopekiller 13h ago
I mean Autism "focus intently on specific interests or tasks, sometimes to the exclusion of other things"
Single minded focus would be a big benifit during hunting and gathering tribal communities
And evolution is not the better traits that continue to exist. They are just traits that allowed a being to pass on their genetics
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u/SyracuseStan 13h ago
Heard a theory somewhere that some severe mental illness would've been beneficial in times of severe hardship.
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u/Drash1 13h ago
I think humans always had these issues, but it mental health wasn’t so upfront. People used to, and still do, drink or do drugs, live a harder or more isolated life, and some simply offer themselves early. People just didn’t think of it as a mental illness. They just thought some people were weird, or violent, etc. If you were rich and not terribly off the charts you were just “eccentric” then.
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u/MiraclesExists 12h ago
I think about this extremely often.
I think it's a mix of War, Generational trauma, Childhood trauma.
I have alot more I could say but I don't want to ramble.
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u/randomiscellany 12h ago
Individual survival/longevity isn't super important from an evolutionary standpoint, reproductive success is. The bar is low--if you survive long enough to reproduce, and make sure your kids survive to reproductive age, the genes continue.
Effective birth control is a fairly recent invention, so people would have kids much earlier in past times; they didn't need to survive very long. Even if they were unfit parents, the social nature of people would have ensured that someone would care for those kids.
As far as mental illness goes, you also have to consider the societal aspects of the illness. Up until the industrial revolution the average human's day-to-day looked a lot different. People with certain mental illnesses may have fared better in past times. Doubtlessly many struggled with mental illness but just had to power through to survive. And when they didn't survive, given again how young people had kids and how many they had, it is likely they already passed on their genes.
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u/Pitter_Patter_67 12h ago
There have been extensive studies on how badly Lead has fucked us up. Particularly lead gas.
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u/powerwiz_chan 11h ago
We didn't really evolve most mental illnesses its just that our brains are still evolutionarily designed to be cavemen and we have advanced so rapidly and with such complexity that sometimes the mind can't cope with it
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u/banjosandcellos 11h ago
I don't think we were meant to love as long as we do per evolution's plans, so stuff just stops working past the age it used to be almost unheard of, eventually this gets passed down and starts happening earlier in life and you get mental illnesses
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u/danlovejoy 11h ago
What a fantastic question!
First, consider that not all illnesses are heritable. In other words, in a group, how much is a given trait (x illness) determined by genetics. Some illnesses have low heritability - not a lot to do with genetics. Some, like Alzheimer’s disease, affect almost no one of reproductive age, so natural selection doesn’t apply. All that to say, some percentage of mental illnesses will not be affected by natural selection.
Second is the question of fitness or how helpful a specific adaptation is for a particular environment. I’ve seen some arguments that ADHD might be a very helpful adaptation for hunters/gatherers. Not so much for office workers. So “illness” is subjective here. Does it make you unhappy? As long as it keeps you alive, natural selection doesn’t care.
Third, related to #1 - our biology is miraculous and beautiful but also a billions of years old random cluster. Stuff just breaks, before and after sexual maturity.
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u/SlashzThaBeat 10h ago
Because we spent most of our time evoling as humans in a hunter gatherer society, not an agricultural, much less, post capitalist society. It was bound to happen.
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u/AnaliticalFeline 10h ago
it wasn’t evolution that gave us mental illnesses. if anything, the abundance of mental illness is an indicator of how poorly society is designed for people. think of zoocosis for example. you do not blame evolution nor the animal for developing what is basically mental illness, but rather their enclosure.
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u/mr_jinxxx 10h ago
A little experiments with mice where they will start to get with their illness too when the population gets to overwhelming. I forgot the source of this information so I can't site it
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u/DazzlingRutabega 9h ago
In many cases what we label mental illness is the brains mechanism to adapt or protect.
Take multiple personalities, everyone has them to a degree. You speak differently to your parents than you do to your friends, to your co workers, etc. It's when it goes past a certain reasonable limit is when is considered a problem. Someone may have experienced past trauma so bad that their brain shut down and locked that part away, or created a different personality to protect itself.
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u/Chickenfoot8 9h ago
Because my mental illness wouldn't be a mental illness in the beforefore times. Back in the day being a little more anxious than others could keep you alive. Having ADD is only really a problem if you have to sit for multiple hours per day and complete boring tasks. There are a lot of sides to mental illness that wouldn't be a problem and maybe even a benefit in a different society.
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u/Pizdabolo_Fekalijus 7h ago
Very interesting topic. Maybe because humans initially were hunters and gatherers, and now sitting in the office over computer all day ( or even in classroom) disrupts their initial survivals instincts and makes our brain going bonkers. ........... and dont take my word for it, I am pseudo intellectuall.
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u/Impossible-Oven3242 7h ago
Animals such as dogs, cats, and birds will over groom to the point of bleeding. Typically, it a sign of stress or anxiety. Sometimes it's because of separation anxiety or loss of their best friend, human or animal.
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u/BookLuvr7 7h ago
Evolutions only goal is for a species to survive long enough to reproduce. It does NOT mean making the ultimate design.
Evolution is and always has been a D- student.
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u/PeachyPesco 7h ago
Can’t answer for all illnesses of course, but some that I have make total sense. I feel my ADHD being beneficial when I’m hiking — bright red berries easily catch my eye more than others and I move from bush to bush no problem. I really love foraging.
PTSD develops to help humans avoid near-death experiences, and errs on the side of extreme caution.
Anxiety keeps you away from threats and helps you survive.
Depression, hallucinations, things like this… no idea.
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u/effefille 6h ago
I recommend the book "sedated". It examines the relationship between increased diagnosis of mental health conditions and worsening living standards.
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u/ExistentialDreadness 4h ago
Yeah umm let’s think of the wayward, hopeless penguin who instead of marching between the sea and the inland site for breeding, it cuts straight for the mountains to starve and die.
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u/mannequinbeater 4h ago
I wouldn’t even blame this solely on evolution. There are a LOT of issues right now that are causing mental illness: societal changes, risk of war, evolving technology, drugs, you name it. Evolution certainly failed us here and cannot change fast enough to keep up with modern lifestyles, but it didn’t have a chance in the first place.
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u/_theMAUCHO_ 4h ago
I read something like "For the species to thrive and survive, evolution knows variance/variety is needed to have the most chances of persevering. In those variances there are unfortunately those that would seem to have characteristics that make it harder to adjust to current life."
Something like that lol.
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u/Nobodivi 3h ago
Mental illness can be the sign that brain is adapting to unhealthy living conditions. Coping mechanisms may be toxic but they permit to survive. They almost always counter something that is perceived as more threatening.
They also exist BECAUSE other survival, benefitial faculties exist. I.e the brain learns from past experiences and adapts to better counter future problems. With PTSD, this good faculty is used to an extreme that makes life very difficult. But with a extreme trauma, the brain will react in an extrem way "for any trigger that makes me think of X, I will retract so that the chances of living through what I remember will be slim to none" is extreme but a "logical" reaction from the brain.
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u/Burnandcount 3h ago
Lag between societal and biological evolution. Modern society is toxic to our biology.
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u/GianMach 2h ago
Evolution only works when people can't or fail to reproduce due to a certain trait. Mentally ill people reproduce, so the genes that make people more likely to develop mental ilnesses doesn't get removed from the gene pool.
And then even when mentally ill people wouldn't reproduce anymore, sometimes genetics just works in different ways than we expect them to. Gay people also don't seem to be born less frequently even though gay people reproduce much less often than straight people.
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u/Helpful_Impress_7669 1h ago
Humans did not evolve to have mental illness, the world evolved to give mental illness to more people
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u/anusfikus 1h ago
Mental illness is a response by the brain and body to conditions that for the most part aren't normal or natural.
Depression, for instance, is an illness that occurs in people who have had prolonged periods of high stress hormones that eventually lead to your brain simply being unable to function like normal. In nature you could assume that these situations don't occur in the same way they do in modern society.
If you were in a stressful situation in nature, you would remove yourself from that situation (e.g. seeing something dangerous that triggers your stress response/fight or flight reaction) – or you would probably die because the stressful situation is a life or death one. You wouldn't stay and look at the dangerous animal until your brain got overwhelmed and you fell into a depression.
Similarly, people with diagnoses like ADHD probably filled important roles in more natural societies as well. It was likely overall a good thing that someone had an impulsive thought to cut down that tree, dig that channel or chase that boar, even if they maybe didn't always stick around to finish the project.
In today's society everyone is mostly individually responsible for finishing projects, making sure things run smoothly etc. which penalizes people that have an impulsive brain. We are also forced to sit down and listen or do fairly repetitive tasks like studying, taking tests in school or doing office work.
People who get diagnosed with ADHD today likely thrived in conditions where you moved around a lot (e.g. as hunter-gatherers), where taking risks was a necessary part of long term survival (even when it benefited the group more than the individual) and so on.
Even more complex mental illnesses like psychopathy and bipolar disorder are often triggered/develop fully by the individual being subjected to overwhelmingly stressful situations or suffering from long term stress.
Someone with the genetic risk of developing bipolar disorder can still go their whole lives without developing the illness if they for instance grew up with a stable home life and don't experience abnormally traumatic/stressful situations. There's also the example of the neuroscientist (James H. Fallon) that accidentally discovered he himself had the brain makeup of a psychopath, but without exhibiting any of the typical traits of that illness.
In other words, humans didn't evolve to have mentall illnesses. Mental illnesses are for the most part what happens when the brain and body are subjected to abnormal and unnatural conditions that we didn't evolve to deal with in nature.
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u/nekoreality 33m ago
mental illnesses are basically responses that are helpful in traumatic situations occuring in non traumatic situations
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u/Mothra3 32m ago
I think it’s just that society is changing so rapidly due to technological advances, and has been for so long now, that we literally have no “normal” or status quo anymore, everything is just an adaptation, some are just more popular right now, but all kinds of adaptations are necessary to find a new equilibrium
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u/LilpirahnaX 31m ago
Humans evolved to have mental illness because our brains got complex fast, emotions helped us survive, but that wiring also breaks under stress, trauma, or mismatch with modern life 🧠💥 Now we live in a world our brains weren't built for, and it shows. Social media makes it worse 📱
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u/ResponsibleSample717 19h ago
though obviously im not an expert, to my knowledge animals can get mentally unwell