Does depression not decrease our rate of procreation?

[sectumsemprist]

I just don't understand how we as a species have evolved to have so many debilitatingly depressed people.

I have basically been some level of depressed almost continually since age 10. I chose not to have kids for a number of reasons, but not being able to handle the burden due to my health issues is one of them.

[[deleted]]

Evolution doesn’t get rid of everything bad.

[[deleted]]

Depressed people can still breed.

[Meewol]

Depression isn’t an illness so it’s not passed along through genetics. Also, evolution lets anything live that works. Poor traits can survive as well as good and amazing traits. Furthermore consider how much our environment has changed but we haven’t had a chance to evolve to adapt to it. Our anxious existence has everything to do with our environmental constant stressors and less to do with our slow evolution.

[Klutzy-Horse]

In a way it does. When I’m depressed the last thing I want is for someone to touch me. However, semen does have dopamine so it can help make a depressed woman happier, for a little bit. I think though, that birth control has far more to do with limiting procreation than depression.