Joe Adragna

Joe_Adragna

Undergraduate Thesis Student
B.Sc. Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour IV

In my third year, I took an abnormal psychology course. The common theme among mental illnesses is their lack of understanding. This sparked the chord of interest in me to study the most debilitating and frequent mental illness world-wide depression. When I learned of the on-going research for depression in my own department, I started looking for opportunities to get involved. I was interested by Dr. Andrews’ work on depression; the analytical rumination hypothesis views depression as being an adaption to solve complex problems—a view contrary to the popular opinion of depression. My past experiences have taught me that alternative perspectives help to better understand difficult problems.

Approaching depression from an alternate perspective is exactly why I was drawn to the EvoHealth lab. My thesis involves investigating the psychomotor symptoms related to depression. The projects implications will be providing support for the causal pathway model of depression, and further supporting the advantageous uses of an adaptationist perspective when studying mental illnesses.