Did Your Brain Evolve to Be Depressed?

An evolutionary explanation of mental illness

Dana G Smith
Elemental
Published in
4 min readFeb 9, 2021

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Credit: Image by cuppyuppycake / Getty Images

This is a modified excerpt from Inside Your Head 🧠, a weekly newsletter exploring why your brain makes you think, feel, and act the way you do, written by me, Elemental’s senior writer and a former brain scientist. Subscribe here so you won’t miss the next one.

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Dana G Smith
Elemental

Health and science writer • PhD in 🧠 • Words in Scientific American, STAT, The Atlantic, The Guardian • Award-winning Covid-19 coverage for Elemental