Evolutionary psychiatry

Evolutionary psychiatry, also known as Darwinian psychiatry, is a discipline of psychiatry that aims to explain psychiatric disorders in evolutionary, usually adaptationist, terms. Though heavily influenced by evolutionary psychology, as Abed and St. John-Smith noted in 2016, "Unlike evolutionary psychology, which is a vibrant and thriving sub-discipline of academic psychology with a strong and well-funded research programme, evolutionary psychiatry remains the interest of a small number of psychiatrists who are thinly scattered across the world." However, it has gained increasing institutional recognition in recent years, including the formation of an evolutionary psychiatry special interest group within the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Section on Evolutionary Psychiatry within the World Psychiatric Association.