Elaine was in her midsixties when she came to the NIMH for help. She had suffered depression symptoms for 45 years and had come to realize that they clustered in the summer. Her only reprieve was her annual vacation in upstate New York, where she swam in the deep, dark, cold water of the Finger Lakes twice or three times a day. After a few days of that self-treatment, her mood lifted, and for the rest of the summer, the depression didn’t return. Subsequent treatment involved staying indoors in her air-conditioned apartment, which improved her mood throughout the summer.
There is a long history of the use of cold baths for various psychiatric ailments, going all the way back to ancient Greece. Exposing people to cold or warm water was part of inpatient treatment as recently as the early twentieth century. Treatment was not always compassionate, and informed consent was often absent. For example, in nineteenth-century France, the bain de surprise (bath of surprise) was a tub of very cold water into which a person was plunged without warning. The element of surprise (or rather shock) was regarded as an important part of the therapeutic effect.
Nowadays cryotherapy, in which individuals languish in cold chambers, is being advertised for all manner of maladies, though most (if not all) of them have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Nevertheless, it would be fascinating to contemplate a study of such cryotherapy for people with summer depression; no doubt it would be easier than a trip to the Finger Lakes.
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