Background: Considering an evolutionary perspective, psychiatric conditions present us with a paradox. How can the high prevalence of those conditions be explained, given the importance of genetic factors in many of them? Evolutionary principles predict that traits with an adverse effect on reproduction undergo negative selection.
Aim: To try to formulate an answer to this paradox from the perspective of evolutionary psychiatry by integrating different disciplines.
Method: We describe some important evolutionary models: the adaptive and maladaptive model, the mismatch model, the trade-off model and the balance model. By way of illustration, we have searched the literature for evolutionary perspectives on autism spectrum disorder.
Results: In this narrative review we describe several evolutionary hypotheses about autism spectrum disorder with a framing within the different evolutionary models. We discuss, among others, evolutionary hypotheses regarding gender differences in social skills, the link with more recent evolutionary cognitive development, and autism spectrum disorder as an extreme cognitive outlier.
Conclusion: We conclude that evolutionary psychiatry offers a complementary point of view on psychiatric conditions and specifically on autism spectrum disorder. A link to neurodiversity and an impetus to clinical translation is made.