Why did evolution need depression and why don't we need it now?

Approximately 4% of the world’s people suffer from depressive disorder, and this figure is higher in women than in men. In the past, doctors used to call it melancholia and could not find a universal treatment. Now they have learnt to cope with depression quite well. And thank God, says Doctor of Biological Sciences Alexander Markov. Because that defence mechanism, which lies in the evolutionary basis of depression, can now be replaced by many others. People without depression will not lose anything important! Alexander Markov and Olga Orlova discuss depression in the 11th episode of the CounterEvolution podcast .

CounterEvolution is a podcast about alternative scenarios of human development. It seems that something has gone wrong with mankind. We know a lot, we know how to do a lot, but we continue to exterminate each other and do not understand the most basic things about each other. Two presenters: biologist Alexander Markov and scientific journalist and editor-in-chief of T-invariant Olga Orlova decided to discuss how modern humans acquired certain properties and what they would be like today if they had developed differently or lost some of their original abilities.

The topic of the eleventh episode is depression.

The first episode isabout cold, the second episode isabout heat, the third episode isabout the sense of smell, the fourth episode isabout war, the fifth episode isabout youth and aging, the sixth episode isabout innate conscience, the seventh episodeis about reproduction, the eighth episodeis about mutations, and the ninth episode isabout genetic inheritance of socially significant traits. And the tenth is about the pros and cons of monogamy.