Short read
Ashley Mason, Rhonda Patrick, Charles Raison and colleagues at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Health and the Weill Institute for Neurosciences ran this randomised, single-blind trial, submitted in April 2025 and published on 22 October 2025 in Global Advances in Integrative Medicine and Health. 30 adults with major depression received eight weekly sessions of cognitive behavioural therapy by video call, combined with whole-body heat treatments every two weeks in an infrared dome. The heat came from an infrared device, not a Finnish sauna.
The trial was designed to measure whether the protocol is feasible and acceptable; efficacy was not its primary endpoint. As a secondary finding, 86.2 % of treated participants no longer met the criteria for major depression at the final assessment. The trial had a control condition, but its details are not recorded in this collection, so the figure cannot be set against a comparison group here.
This is the point most secondary reports miss: 86.2 % is a secondary result in 30 people from a trial designed to test whether the protocol is accepted, not whether it works. A single-arm forerunner had 16 participants. The trial used a device from a commercial manufacturer that actively promotes the results.
What the study shows above all is that patients accept and complete the combined protocol. Researchers at UCSF are testing the approach with a promising interim signal; that is not proof of efficacy, it does not show that sauna use treats depression, and it is no reason to replace an existing therapy.