The evolutionary future of psychopathology

• Evolutionary theory helps explain the origin and development of psychopathology.
• Recent evolutionary work has implications for taxonomies of mental disorders.
• Evolutionary psychopathology offers an integrative framework for the discipline.

Evolutionary approaches to psychopathology have made considerable progress over the last years. In this paper, I review recent advances in the field focusing on three core themes: the role of trade-offs and conflicts in the origins mental disorders, the evolution of developmental mechanisms, and the emergence of alternative classification systems based on life history theory. I situate these advances in the context of current research in psychopathology, and highlight their connections with other innovative approaches such as developmental psychopathology and computational psychiatry. In total, I argue that evolutionary psychopathology offers an integrative framework for the study of mental disorders, and allows complementary approaches to connect and cross-fertilize.