Any evolutionary advantage to mental illness?

It's an interesting thought. I can't think of any universal condition that would favor a person with mental illness, except for the fact that some schizophrenics in ancient societies have become shamans or spiritual advisors. It's a strange phenomenon that mental illness is often accompanied with excessive religiosity.

I think you could make a case for milder forms of autism. Bi-polar disorder often translates into periods of hyper activity. I could see how someone like that could use this to their advantage.

In general, there are many genetic diseases that confer no obvious advantage, but remain in the gene pool anyway.
 
No, there isn't any advantage. Back in the old days, these people would be left to die so as not to put their genes in with the rest of the healthy people, you know, natural selection. Unfortunately, nowadays anyone can survive and then pollute our genes pool...

Anyway, no, there is no advantage, the genes were mutated and resulted in a bad thing.
 
Are mental disorders also considered mental illnesses?
Because if so, you have all the people with:
-bipolarity
-anxiety
-ADD/ADHD
-depression
that are mentally 'ill' as well. Including myself.
 
I asked if there was an evolutionary advantage - not just an advantage. I assume there are advantages to being mentally ill in some "crazy" circumstances. However, does mental illness help propagate the species?
 
If it doesn't interfere with getting a chance to breed, then it will not be selected against.
 
How could mental illness not interfere with a chance to breed? In comparison to the general population, I bet the mentally ill are having a lot less children.
 
I would imagine this is one of the situations where we as humans are unaffected by the grasps of natural selection in a sense. Our care for our fellow humans on a social level has risen to a point where we will care for one another even if the person is unfit to take care of themselves. I doubt this would have happened to such a lengthy and obsessive extent in early hominids, unless the group had the resources necessary to care for the afflicted.

As such, I don't think there are any evolutionary advantages for these conditions.

Also, I don't think it's really a genetic inheritance type passing. I have rather limited knowledge of mental illness, but I have thought of them as a chemical imbalance that has lead to an instability of sorts. This would seem to be more likely caused during development of the individual.

But, I don't really know.
 
Orleander said:
yes, but you asked if there was an advantage.
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No, the question was whether there is an evolutionary advantage. Your artistically talented examples are certainly of societal importance but a fail to see how their mental illnesses and their artistic gifts constitute any evolutionary advantage.
 
Evolutionary advantages can sometimes be subtle things and the genes causing mental illness may well affect other things as well. Traits that promote social bonding may well prove to be evolutionary advantages in social animals like man (including artistic ability). I know of no good way to exclude the possibility.

To take an non-mental analogy, the gene that causes sickle cell anemia seems to be an obvious evolutionary advantage so long as you live in a high malaria environment and are lucky enough to only have one copy of that gene. The benefit of the sickle cell gene is obvious and easy to see. It's possible that the gene (or genes) responsible for schizophrenia have some similar advantage when not taken to their fullest (most detrimental) extreme.
 
Idle Mind said:
....Our care for our fellow humans on a social level has risen to a point where we will care for one another even if the person is unfit to take care of themselves. .....
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Maybe that was the evolutionary advantage. It taught us to care about someone
 
John J. Bannan said:
How could mental illness not interfere with a chance to breed? In comparison to the general population, I bet the mentally ill are having a lot less children.
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Well thank God, otherwise we would all be mentally ill. If they have even a few children, the trait will survive. That's why homosexuality survives, sometimes they do breed in spite of everything.
 
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