Therapy
Typical for fever due to stress is that the normally used means to lower fever are less effective than usual for this particular form of fever. Therefore, other therapeutic approaches have to be applied that do not focus on fever but on psychological stress. The treatment then consists – similar to an anxiety and panic disorder – of therapy and, if necessary, the administration of medication. The drugs used are usually tranquilizers, i.e. drugs that have a calming or anxiety-relieving effect. Drug therapy should only be used in acute cases where psychotherapy is otherwise not possible or when it is foreseeable that the stress that has triggered it will soon be over.
Duration
Fever, which is caused by psychological stress, will last as long as the stress is present in the life of the affected person. One should consider that one does not always perceive one’s own stress as such: The repression of the feeling of stress can already be the trigger of the fever, since a lack of conscious handling often represents the first step towards somatization, i.e. the projection of stress onto the physical level. Of course, stress cannot always be consistently avoided.
However, if feverish temperatures are already the result of stress, at the latest a stress-free lifestyle should be considered. Accordingly, the body temperature should have fallen back to a physiological value after one week at the latest. If this is not the case, another possible cause for the persistent fever should be sought with medical help.
Fever due to stress in babies
So far there is little evidence that even small children or even babies can develop fever due to stress. It is theoretically possible – but then a long and intensive stress must have preceded it, which these children then transfer to the physical level. Since it is already an extremely rare phenomenon in adults, children should be diagnosed with even greater caution.There are also many different diseases that are experienced in childhood.
Here it is therefore necessary to thoroughly examine any organic cause, since in case of doubt it must be monitored or treated. Only when all other, particularly infectious causes have been clarified and a source of stress in the life of the affected person has been identified, should the treatment of a stress fever take place. Here, however, one refrains from drug therapy approaches, but applies socio-psychological measures.
