Your Immune System Might Be Causing Your Depression

Think about the last time you were really sick. You didn't want to eat, you stayed in bed, you lost interest in everything. That's your immune system talking to your brain. For roughly one in four people with depression, that circuit never fully turns off. Dr. Naoise Mac Giollabhui, Director of Research on Inflammatory Depression at Harvard Medical School and Mass General, joins Neural Compass to explain what chronic inflammation is doing to the brain — and why treating it could change psychiatry. Option B — Failed trials/science problem as a hook: For decades, researchers ran large trials giving anti-inflammatory drugs to depressed patients. Most of them failed. The problem wasn't the treatment — it was that only about one in four depressed people actually have the inflammatory subtype those drugs could help. Dr. Naoise Mac Giollabhui joins Mark to explain how psychiatry is finally learning to ask the right question: not just "is this person depressed?" but "why?"