Exposure to trauma and the clinical presentation of first-episode psychosis in South Africa.

Objective: To evaluate the relationship between a history of traumatic experiences and the clinical features of first-episode psychosis (FEP).

Method: We tested associations between trauma variables and duration of untreated psychosis (DUP), age of onset (AO), PANSS-rated positive and negative symptoms and depressive symptoms (Calgary Depression Scale) in a sample of 54 FEP patients.

Results: Mean DUP was 34.

Mental health and inequity: a human rights approach to inequality, discrimination, and mental disability.

Mental disability and mental health care have been neglected in the discourse around health, human rights, and equality. This is perplexing as mental disabilities are pervasive, affecting approximately 8% of the world population. Furthermore, the experience of persons with mental disability is one characterized by multiple interlinked levels of inequality and discrimination within society.

Reconciling 'the new epidemiology' with an evolutionary genetic basis for schizophrenia.

Recent epidemiological findings of variable incidence and prevalence pose a problem for evolutionary genetic analyses of schizophrenia. The author rejects models of psychosis based on balanced polymorphism and develops an alternative evolutionary model incorporating concepts of anatagonistic pleiotropy, 'cliff-edged fitness' and gene-environment interactions. In essence, genes for psychosis are considered as 'normal genes' that play a fundamental role in neurodevelopment.

Psychosis: a costly by-product of social brain evolution in Homo sapiens.

The plethora of varied and often conflictual research evidence on the functional psychoses calls for a unifying explanatory framework. An evolutionary framework is appropriate in view of the paradoxical epidemiology of the disorders. Evolutionary models that rely on balanced polymorphism or group selection models are not supported by the evidence.

An evolutionary theory of schizophrenia: cortical connectivity, metarepresentation, and the social brain.

Schizophrenia is a worldwide, prevalent disorder with a multifactorial but highly genetic aetiology. A constant prevalence rate in the face of reduced fecundity has caused some to argue that an evolutionary advantage exists in unaffected relatives. Here, I critique this adaptationist approach, and review--and find wanting--Crow's "speciation" hypothesis.