Joseba Achotegui
Finding the causes of depression is, without a doubt, one of the great challenges in the area of mental health. And one of the most relevant hypotheses about its origin comes from evolutionary theory that confirms the relationships between subordination and depression. A topic of great social importance since subordination behaviors occur in numerous contexts such as personal, labor or political relationships.
The evolutionary approach confirms that subordination behaviors occur in nature in certain contexts of defeat, of failure, and are already observable from reptiles at all levels of the zoological scale. These behaviors, it is held from evolutionism, can be adaptive in contexts in which there are few resources and continually fighting for them involves a lot of energy expenditure.
In nature, in a situation of defeat, for the animal to accept that it has lost allows it not to continue the battle until the end, with the risk that this entails of serious injuries or even death. But it is very important that the winner does not feed on the defeated, respects him and does not humiliate him. That both, winner and defeated, continue to collaborate later. In other words, the important thing is to see how this subordination takes place, which is also temporary, circumstantial. Faced with this situation, many researchers postulate that evolution has selected a mechanism called IDS (Involuntary Defeat Strategy) that automatically allows the defeated animal to adapt to the situation, as has been demonstrated experimentally.
In any case, we must not fall into the so-called biologist fallacy, and understand that humans do not have to abide by the laws of nature, but rather have built ethics to structure our codes of values. But knowing that we carry in our genes, a product of natural selection, this mechanism, the IDS, is very relevant from the area of mental health.
For example, on a human level, we also have to deal with success or defeat. Thus, if several people compete for a management position, obviously not all of them can achieve it, but if the winner, or the group, humiliates the one who has lost the competition, this perpetuates their feeling of failure, lowering their self-esteem and this could be a of the causes of depression. However, if the loser is respected and has the support of the group, he can go on overcoming the situation, working on it.
There are many examples of situations of temporary subordination: on a flight or a boat trip we accept that the captain directs the operations on board, we cannot give all the passengers an opinion by show of hands about what speed is better to go in a storm. There is a captain who runs the ship, who has been selected for his level of proficiency, and we accept him. But that captain has temporary power and cannot do what he wants with the “power” that we have delegated to him.
This subordination that we accept in the journey is adaptive, reversible, moderate. But if this subordination is perpetuated by acting despotic on the subordinate, it constitutes one of the most important ways that can lead to depression.
It has been known since the 1970s that depression is more frequent in the popular classes subjected to harsher life situations, including often humiliating subordination. Taking these evolutionary approaches into account is, without a doubt, very relevant from the area of mental health.