Outline and evaluate evolutionary explanations of two types of mental disorders.

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Outline and evaluate evolutionary explanations of two types of mental disorders:

One type of mental disorder that has been explained in terms of evolution is depression. There are two types of depression, unipolar depression that is ‘normal’ depression and bipolar depression, which is also referred to as manic depression.

Bipolar depression consists of extreme highs and lows, this sort of depression has been highly linked with creativity, and many people such as Winston Churchill, Van Gogh and Virginia Woolf were thought to have bipolar depression. It is thought that bipolar depression may have been naturally selected in evolution because the creativity and intelligence, which accompany the disorder, were very highly valued characteristics and meant that people with bipolar depression were more likely to attract a potential mate.

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Bowlby suggested that depression has been past through evolution because it enables people to over come detachment. Bowlby believes that everyone needs to form a bond to an attachment figure and that if that bond is broken you go through three stages, protest despair and detachment. Depression comes with the despair and people must go through that step before moving on to detachment. This theory is called deprivation depression.

Another theory that suggests that depression can be explained evolutionarily is defeat depression. Stevens and Price proposed defeat depression or the rank theory, they suggested that because humans live in groups ...

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