In a large new study, published in the journal Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine researchers found that repeated head impacts lead to a greater likelihood subjects would develop depression and other mood disorders later in life.
The researchers separated concussions (traumatic brain injuries) from less intense incidents like repeatedly getting your head banged around (football type stuff), and found that both concussions and repetitive head hits played a role in developing later depression, but interestingly — repetitive hits played a larger role than traumatic brain injuries.
That means the quantity of hits seems to matter more than the quality.
The relationship between head injury and depression held true, independent of age, sex, racial identity and education level.
Which means — it doesn’t matter who you are — repetitive head injuries are more likely to lead to depressive symptoms later in life.
This is yet another example of how tragic it is that people lay depression at the feet of some kind of spiritual defect.
If depression were, indeed, a spiritual issue, head impacts wouldn’t even be involved in the discussion.
Once again, we can add this to the giant body of literature suggesting that clinical depression is a medical disease, and should be treated as such by the church and all her congregants.
[photo: Pexels]
