A brand new study from researchers at UC San Francisco and published in Scientific Reports finds a link between increased body temperature and depression.

The novel finding raises more questions than it asks, but the questions certainly are potentially fruitful.

Read NeuroScience’s great piece for a broader overview, but here’s the gist:

The researchers analyzed over 20,000 participants, internationally, over a seven month period and found that with each level of increasing depression severity, people had higher body temperatures.

Why?

Totally unclear.

And it’s also unclear whether depression raises body temperature or whether a higher temperature caused depression.

That’s another big question.

But as researchers at UCSF note, it could explain why some studies have suggested hot tubs or saunas can ease depression severity. Perhaps, UCSF notes, by triggering the body to self-cool through sweating.

If that’s the case, then you can certainly see how the case for a sauna could be bolstered, while triggering novel approaches to dealing with the problem.

By the way, I’ve noted on this blog about the extensively observed, well-researched “psychogenic fever,” where stress affects body temperature.

These patients develop high core body temperatures when exposed to emotional, stressful events, and it’s not yet entirely understood why, although chronically-stressed animals show similar spikes in temperature.

I came across the topic a few years ago when I was trying to get to the bottom of my own “fevers of unknown origin” (as doctors commonly call it).

If I wasn’t sick, why did I keep getting fevers?

As anyone with anxiety might (or should or shouldn’t do), I typed “anxiety fevers” and shockingly, a lot of research has been done, and there’s plenty of anecdotal stuff on discussion boards, as well.

Many doctors are unaware of the phenomenon, so it’s definitely worth looking at.

But again, it’s absolutely imperative you rule out with doctors other causes of fever before chalking it up to anxiety (or now, we’re learning, possibly depression).

So back to the new study — it’s an exciting one, because even though both the relationship and mechanisms are unclear at this point — there’s a lot of promise in new, potential therapies and future research.

Finally, if you’re struggling with depression (as I do!).

For readers from the United States….

Find a psychiatrist here.

Find a therapist here.

For readers, internationally, please seek help from a local resource.

If you’re having thoughts of harming yourself or others, please call the National Suicide Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

[Painting: Midsummer, Albert Joseph Moore, 1887]

A fascinating new study in Scientific Reports shows just how revealing our eyes can be, and how a simple test might help doctors diagnose depression, in the future.

Read Felicity Nelson’s overview of the study at Science Alert, but here’s the gist.

You know that sense of total lethargy, apathy, lack of joy, lack of pleasure in anything, lack of everything that you feel when you’re depressed?

That’s known as anhedonia, and it’s the kind of depression that makes you lose all interest to do just about anything, because you literally have kind of lost all interest in anything.

It’s the “I can’t work up the energy to brush my teeth, even if they are about to fall out. Who cares if I don’t have teeth? I don’t like smiling in pictures anyway.”

I wrote about my experience with this type of depression awhile ago, and if you’re a regular reader, you probably have experienced it, as well.

To those who haven’t, I’m grateful you haven’t experienced it, but seriously, it’s real.

Anyway, there’s a reason for anhedonia, and studies suggest it could stem from a lack of activity in your brain’s ventral striatum, and that could be caused by any number of things we’re still learning about, including depression, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia and other conditions of the brain.

One external, scientific clue about what might be happening (besides our obvious behavioral clues) comes when researchers dangle something normally appealing in front of our eyes.

So says the new study.

If we’re not depressed, the sight of something we love will dilate our pupils.

So, I love Paris. No matter the arrondissement, the time of year, the size of crowds, the anything, I will always love that city. Even if they take out the green chairs.

And when you show me even the most cliched trinket of Paris, my eyes will dilate.

Unless… I’m depressed.

That’s what the new study shows.

Depressed people show their depression in the way their eyes (do or don’t) respond to normally satisfying stimuli. And that’s because the reward circuit in the brain has been affected.

So for example, when presented with the prospect of winning money (universally liked, right), the study showed a remarkable difference in pupil dilation between depressed and non-depressed participants.

You can click on the study to see pictures for yourself, but it’s just remarkable.

Of course, simply confirming anhedonia doesn’t treat that symptom, but any new fragment of information regarding how our brains work in this disease is helpful for further research.

And if someone doubts your depression, just say, “OFFER ME SOME MONEY AND LOOK AT MY PUPILS.”

Except you won’t care if they doubt your depression, at that moment. Because you don’t care.

And if you feel like that right now… believe me, I’ve been there and often return to that dreadful land, and we really don’t know how we arrived there, do we? We just are there. No bags in hand, no clue of how we got there, and no thought that hope could even be found because that concept itself, “hope,” seems as distant in this grey as the joy we once experienced.

So if you feel like that…

For readers from the United States….

Find a psychiatrist here.

Find a therapist here.

For readers, internationally, please seek help from a local resource.

If you’re having thoughts of harming yourself or others, please call the National Suicide Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

[Photo: Pexels, free photography].

A new study in JAMA offers impressive evidence that two treatment modalities – Behavioral Activation Psychotherapy (BA) and Antidepressant Medication Management (MEDS)– can significantly ease the severity of depression in patients, post-heart failure.

Heart failure can be devastating, physically, and patients often experience awful mental health, as well. A full 50% of patients with heart failure will experience clinical depression.

Explanation unnecessary.

Enter a new study that looked at how effective BA and MEDS can be for such patients.

Read this broader review from Giuliana Grossi, but here’s the gist:

Patients given BA therapy experienced a 50% reduction in depression symptoms at the 3, 6, and 12 month marks.

Meanwhile, they also had improved physical quality of life and fewer emergency department visits and hospitalizations.

In other words, BA can work wonders for those enduring the double-trauma of heart failure and depression.

Meanwhile, the MEDS alone group showed strong efficacy, as well (also around 50%) at reducing depressive symptoms, but offered fewer benefits in quality of life and hospital visits.

In other words, the data seems to suggest what you might expect — that BA is a more comprehensive modality with more comprehensive results.

So what is Behavioral Activation Psychotherapy?

The University of Michigan has a great guide, but to shorten things up: It’s a version of CBT that leans in heavily on how behaviors and feelings influence each other. The goal is to shorten, or downright avoid the negative downward spirals (how we all know about those, huh?) by encouraging activities that promote an “upward spiral of motivation and energy through pleasure and mastery” of an enjoyable and meaningful activity.

In other words, sure, turn around the thinking, but that’s not all there is. Start doing.

In BA alone, “action precedes emotion.”

It doesn’t mean you won’t have a negative spiral, you might just experience fewer spirals, and of course, that’s when cognitive rethinking comes into play.

So sure, it’s good to try to hijack the downward spiral, but it’s even better to take positive action before the spiral begins.

On the days you feel good, reinforce that feeling. And it will reap dividends.

Something like that. I’m not a trained therapist, by any stretch of the imagination, so read the guide (which includes a workbook) and look for a therapist (below) if you’re interested, but it seems pretty helpful.

And certainly, the new study suggests it’s awfully helpful, both physically and mentally, for patients suffering from both heart failure and depression.

Indeed, there’s another brand new study from the UK, published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity, that shows behavioral activation therapy through weekly telephone calls can meaningfully improve depression and quality of life for senior citizens (average age: 76 years old).

Now quick note:

I think a lot of Christian senior citizens might feel particular pressure to bottle up their depression or anxiety etc.

First, the younger generation of Christians was raised on the idea that mental health is a real thing, and indeed, a physical condition.

There’s far less shame if you’re a young Christian in revealing your depression or anxiety etc., because those terms are bandied about so often among young people.

But the older generation faces a couple problems on this score. They didn’t grow up in an environment where you talked about these issues. And there seems to be (I’d guess) a natural inclination to assume the role of the wiser person, who’s finally found the secret to life.

“Seek wisdom from the ancients” is as ancient an axiom, across culture and time, as there is.

And while, yes, senior citizens are full of wisdom, wisdom is quite separate from despair.

In fact, a great kind of wisdom comes from understanding despair.

When young people first face it, they’re often overwhelmed. Life isn’t supposed to be like this. What do I do? In addition to the dread, there’s an existential panic of being confronted with something for the first time.

But an older, wiser person might be able to reassure a younger person that, no, they’re not experiencing anything unusual and that, yes, there’s something called anxiety and that looking for help isn’t weakness (like we assume, as young folk), but instead strength.

So wisdom and depression can, and often, co-exist.

Now, for older Christians, I’d suspect the problem is even more acute.

They have to manage the misunderstanding that, along with wisdom and age, comes serenity.

Additionally, they have to manage the further burden of “Christian serenity.” I don’t put “Christian serenity” in quotes to mock it or say it doesn’t exist. It absolutely does. Absolutely. I only say that you can have a peace with Christ that you feel and intellectually know, along with a war that will continue to wage inside, until we reach heaven.

As a minor prophet put it: “There is no discharge in that war,” and to be a wise, older Christian is to recognize that (see my recent interview with Dr. Terry Powell, who smashes stigmas to shreds by openly speaking of his own depression and anxiety).

American society is always forgetting the older, the lonely.

We often view their lives through the same economic criteria that the American productivity model often manufactures. And that is crass and bottom-lined, and bottom in every sense of the term.

We should learn from eastern societies, where the older generation is not forgotten but instead truly venerated.

And the church needs to remember this, as well.

Older congregants might not bring kids or a huge paycheck to fill the coffers, but their needs are as great (maybe greater) and their worth of infinite value until their final breaths.

There is a wisdom in living, perhaps, a few years or days from your passing.

The closer you are to heaven, the more perspective you bring. Many saints of old urged those of every age to think actively of their final day, for it brings urgency to the current one.

So, when we take care of the elderly, they also take care of us. We see our lives through theirs and what a gift.

And remember — they can struggle too, and not just physically, the way we crassly assume.

Their mental wounds can, in fact, be deeper because they carry more nights of grief with them, and those nights add up.

Solomon, the wisest who ever was, ended on the right note (Ecclesiastes) and it wasn’t a particularly sanguine one.

There was melancholy and sadness, but ultimately, his final and most supreme wisdom.

When my wife and I had our first child, I remember taking him places and older folks saying, “Enjoy every minute,” and we chuckle because we hear it so much.

But we hear it so much because it’s so true. And instead of a chuckle, we should stop and say a blessing. For the one who just reminded us what we so often forget. Time is short. God is near.

Find a psychiatrist here.

Find a therapist here.

If you’re having thoughts of harming yourself or others, please call the National Suicide Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

[Painting: Old Man with a Cane, Babailov]