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For once, Sweden tops a troubling list

We’re used to seeing Sweden (and other Nordic countries) at the top of so many lists of best countries for XYZ. XYZ is usually something related to quality of life.

Sweden, as it turns out, is #2 on Quality of Life, #6 on Good Country List (defined as contributors to global well-being), and #7 on happiness.

That might be about to change.

A new study of EU member nations shows Swedish youth are, by far, at the highest risk for depression.

A whopping 41% of Swedes 18-24 years old are listed as risks for depression, considerably higher than runner-ups Estonia and Malta.

One possible explanation?

The report highlights widespread feelings of marginalisation among young people in Europe due to the economic crisis. Presenting in-depth case studies of support services in five Member States, it notes the significant spike in child and youth homelessness in several countries since the crisis – including in economically advanced Member States typically characterised by welfare states and higher levels of social spending.

July 11, 2019

STUDY: How inflammation can affect motivation

written by Christian Heinze

One of the classic symptoms of depression is a lack of motivation, and cheery judgmental folks often judge the depressed as “lazy” when they lie in bed and wake up only to watch Jeopardy, then go back to bed.

But if you’ve ever been severely depressed, you know how overwhelming it is to just gin up the strength to live.

And to really “live” in the Dance in the Rain/Instagram Life way?

To tweak the words of Jesus: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a severely depressed person to dance in the rain.”

That’s why mental illness is the leading cause of disability in the United States. It’s not because people are lazy. It’s because dread, hopelessness, and misery strip us of the strength to do anything.

In A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis writes, “No one ever told me about the laziness of grief” and “it’s easy to see why the lonely become untidy, finally, dirty and disgusting.”

Well, science is starting to understand why.

Studies are showing that the chronic low-grade inflammation that can lead to depression significantly affects our levels of dopamine.

Dopamine is what drives motivation. If you have low levels of dopamine, you probably can’t gin up much motivation.

Now a fascinating new study in Trends in Cognitive Sciences is giving us some idea of why.

Basically, chronic inflammation tells the body to fight something, and dopamine gets the short end of the stick.

Or as the study authors put it: “the immune system disrupts the dopamine system to help the brain perform this recalibration.”

That doesn’t happen to everyone, but in the depressed, it appears the immune system often doesn’t work right and affects your dopamine levels.

(Think about Elijah, retreating to the cave during his battle with a depressive episode. He seems to have lost motivation to prophet it up).

In the same way, you and I feel like retreating from our responsibilities during a bout of depression. It’s our dopamine, not some grand design to get out of things just because we want an extra hour to play Madden Mobile.

Of course, we have to fight through this, but it’s also important to give ourselves grace, and also for others to understand the scientific basis for this very real loss of motivation before they text us: “Go to the ant, you sluggard.”

Painting: Ennui, Walter Sickert.

July 9, 2019

Mental Health Links

written by Christian Heinze

a. Golfer Thomas Bjorn talks about his depression: “When you’re a young man, you hide your feelings.”

b. A story about postpartum anxiety.

c. Coping with depression during retirement.

d. Study: Gender affects the correlation between depression and weight in children and adolescents.

e. Study: Anxiety in Late Life: An update on Pathomechanisms.

f. Kate Middleton’s brother talks about his “crippling” depression.

g. Fast Company: Coping with Social Anxiety.

“And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory.” — Colossians 1:27

June 28, 2019

Chris Cuomo talks about his depression

written by Christian Heinze

On CNN, host Chris Cuomo bravely talks about his battle with mental health (video here).

“I came home many years ago from one tragedy to another. I had weeks of bad dreams and days of flashbacks and emotional confusion.

I realized, over time — people were around me were telling me — that it was affecting me and my relationships.

….I went to someone, they prescribed medication and [said] I had to talk through this, I had to go through the therapy process and understand why I wasn’t processing things that were haunting me.

It helped. A lot. Maybe more than any other treatment I’ve ever had on my body. I made therapy part of my routine, to this day, and it helps, to this day. It is better than the gym, okay?

…. There’s part of me that says I don’t want to rely on it. Everyone says they go to the gym 5 days a week. You say you go to therapy and [feigning shock]. No. Like what, it betrays a weakness in me? Like I care what you think? Or I care about how I take care of myself and those around me.

….Many don’t even consider it an illness like cancer or diabetes or heart disease. Yet none is as daunting as mental illness as far as what it robs us of in this society.

…. Depression is not a mood, it is a malady. It is a medical, treatable illness, and yet we hide from it.”

Later, Cuomo notes that the stigma is particularly bad for men, which is true. There have been relatively few celebrity male voices speaking out about their struggles, or male Christian ones, for that matter. Which is what makes Cuomo and Carson Daly’s revelations, for example, all the more important.

Also, what’s particularly wonderful is that Cuomo is in the field of journalism where he could quite easily be trolled by partisans for being “mentally ill” after acknowledging this battle. Yet he talks anyway. Bravery.

Here’s vid of Cuomo talking about it in another segment.

June 28, 2019

An Anglican Prayer

written by Christian Heinze

Taken from N.T. Wright’s book, Simply Christian.

Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord;

and by thy great mercy

defend us from all perils and dangers of this night;

for the love of thy only Son,

our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

June 25, 2019

Spurgeon, on judging the anxious

written by Christian Heinze

Charles Spurgeon, in his sermon, “Man Unknown to Man.”

“Allow no ungenerous suspicions of the afflicted, the poor, and the despondent.

Do not hastily say they ought to be more brave, and exhibit a greater faith.

Ask not, ‘Why are they so nervous and so absurdly fearful?’

No… I beseech you, remember that you understand not your fellow man.”

Sermon quote appears in Zack Eswine’s, Spurgeon’s Sorrows.

June 17, 2019

C.S. Lewis on misery

written by Christian Heinze

To brighten your day… (actually, it does brighten our day to find someone who gets it, right?).

From A Grief Observed:

“Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.”

No kidding.

By the way, I like to play a fun game when I read Christian books.

Count how many pages it takes until the author quotes C.S. Lewis.

I don’t think there’s a Christian book written, post-1980, that doesn’t quote Mere Christianity before Chapter 2. Usually, it takes until chapter 6 to get to Screwtape.

June 14, 2019

Are we really grateful for sustaining grace?

written by Christian Heinze

Vaneetha Rendall Risner contracted polio as a child, and had 21 surgeries by the time she was 13 years old.

Years later, after having married and had children, she was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome, and has suffered excruciatingly since then.

She’s also written beautifully and honestly about that suffering in a book, The Scars that Have Shaped Me: How God Meets Us in Suffering.

In one chapter, Risner writes about “sustaining grace.” You know, that common phrase we deploy in our group prayers. We pretend that’s all we really want, “sustaining grace,” because of course, we’re too spiritual to pray for outright healing.

We all ask God for sustaining grace, but as she points out — are we thankful for it, or do we just actually complain about it?

In the book, Risner tells about a conversation with a friend.

“[Her friend said] ‘Everyone loves the grace that delivers us. But the Israelites, like us, were dissatisfied with daily manna. We all complain about the grace that merely sustains us’.

We all complain about sustaining grace. The truth of it hit me hard….were my prayers for deliverance answered with the gift of sustenance? Do I not see that this was an answer, too?

It’s a tremendous and convicting point.

We don’t really think of sustaining grace as grace, at all, do we? Especially, as depressed and suffering people.

Sustaining grace doesn’t feel sweet like grace is supposed to, it doesn’t seem undeserved, as grace is. In fact, we actually feel entitled to the daily sustaining grace of manna.

If we feel entitled to it, we will never see it as grace. We will only see it as God withholding grace. Sustaining Grace suddenly becomes God’s Withdrawal of Grace.

But the truth is that sustaining grace is still grace and our failure to recognize it doesn’t change its quality.

So are you, am I really grateful for sustaining grace? Not delivering grace, but grace that feels dismal, grace that doesn’t seem graceful?

June 12, 2019

Worries over new ketamine-like drug for depression

written by Christian Heinze

NBC reports on a pretty shoddy FDA approval process for Janssen’s new, trailblazing drug for treating depression — Spravato.

Spravato is a nasal-spray that uses esketamine, which is a cousin of ketamine.

NBC News notes that Janssen didn’t even provide safety information for drug use beyond 60 weeks (!), and seemed to ignore the fact that 3 users committed suicide during trials, compared to 0 in the placebo groups.

Dr. Jess Fiedorowicz, director of the Mood Disorders Center at the University of Iowa and a member of the FDA advisory committee that reviewed the drug, described its benefit as “almost certainly exaggerated” after hearing the evidence.
Fiedorowicz said he expected at least a split decision by the committee. “And then it went strongly in favor, which surprised me,” he said in an interview.
Esketamine’s trajectory to approval shows — step by step — how drugmakers can take advantage of shortcuts in the FDA process with the agency’s blessing and maneuver through safety and efficacy reviews to bring a lucrative drug to market.

As the article notes, the drug is a windfall for Janssen. They’re charging $4,700 for the first month of treatment.

June 11, 2019

Paul Miller on cynicism

written by Christian Heinze

A lot of Christians with depression can easily slip into cynicism — both towards the world and God.

In his good book on prayer, Paul Miller explains why cynicism is so damaging to our spiritual life.

“Cynicism and defeated weariness have this in common: They both question the active goodness of God on our behalf…. Satan’s first recorded words are cynical. He tells Adam and Eve, ‘For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.’.” Satan is suggesting that God’s motives are cynical.”

….Both the child and the cynic walk through the valley of the shadow of death. The cynic focuses on the darkness; the child focuses on the Shepherd.”

Later, Miller quotes a Cuban writer, Yoanni Sanchez, who writes of the younger generation: “Our defining characteristic is cynicism. But that’s a double-edged sword. It protects you from crushing disappointment, but it paralyzes you from doing anything. “

By the way, I don’t think we should chuck our cynicism.

We’d never come to Christ if we weren’t cynical about the world. Its failed promises, the fact it can never give us exactly what we want.

G.K. Chesterton wrote that behind every cynic is a romantic idealist, and we’re all romantic idealists until we’re not. Some of us lose it in childhood, some of us a bit later.

But at some point, we all grow cynical. That’s good. We can only embrace God’s promises when we give up on the world’s.

The problem is when we grow cynical towards God himself (I’ve been there, and still, often drift into that grey and weary land). That’s the cynicism we need to fight, but I know it’s so hard because after a lifetime of the world failing us, it’s hard to put faith in something else — no matter how otherworldly it is.

But that’s what all this is about, our Christian walk. Becoming a child, again, to God as savior, while remaining very grown up and cynical about the world as savior.

June 5, 2019

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