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Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

nytimes.com

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Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#51

Post by mjevans »

joecool1029 wrote: post #17
weaksauce wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish we would all go on DST and be done with it forever. The extra hour of usable daylight after work is a net win for societies mental health. We have farming machines that do the heavy lifting and are mostly automated now anyway. Unlike when it was enacted, there simply are much fewer farmers.

Think of the children!!! EDIT: I should clarify that this is nearly always the argument brought up against year round DST, so that children during winter go to school with sunlight in the morning.

Yes, let's think of the children, and let them get the sleep that they need. (I am not a morning person, and really should have had much more sleep after local sunrise.)

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#53

Post by sandworm101 »

Ambroos wrote: post #47
sandworm101 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mood yes. Ask the kids who rave all night. But cognition? Im not convinced. I find my memory and problem solving abilities really drop after 30+ hours without sleep. Maybe it is a good tool for the depressed, but i would not suggest it to those looking to boost otherwise healthy/normal minds.

I sometimes go a whole night without sleep when I'm nervous about something important. I function much better on no sleep than on less than 5 hours of sleep (for one night only that is). What I've noticed is that without sleep, some of my abilities are stronger, but everything memory-related is much weaker. I notice everything extremely fast, think quickly and react much faster than normally. My focus is pretty crazy…

Sounds like a stressed prey animal dropping higher brain functions (memory, long-term planning) in favor of the more reactive minute-to-minute instincts needed to avoid being spotted and eaten by lions.

I mean lions literally because four-legged things with the big teeth were a driving force of our evolution for millions of years. Those instincts/traits are very much with us today.

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#54

Post by anigbrowl »

transcranial wrote: post #8
roywiggins wrote: post #5

I wonder what damage our twice yearly clock changes do. An hour doesn't seem like much but, giving an entire population a little bit of jet lag simultaneously has to be bad for us, right?

There are definitely measurable population-level effects, like increased traffic accidents [1] and heart attacks [2]. And given that its purported benefits are completely unsubstantiated, it's amazing that DST still exists. [1] https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20140100 [2] http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc0807104

Perhaps mentally ill people should sue for its removal on the basis that we don't want to carry the can for whatever non-actual benefits are ascribed to DST.

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#55

Post by laumars »

sandworm101 wrote: post #44
update wrote: post #12

> Tübingen who was hospitalized for depression and claimed that she normally kept her symptoms in check by taking all-night bike rides. He subsequently demonstrated in a group of depressed patients that a night of complete sleep deprivation produced an immediate, significant improvement in mood in about 60 percent of the group. I thought this bit was neat. I'd heard that sleep deprivation can bring on a feeling of eu…

Mood yes. Ask the kids who rave all night. But cognition? Im not convinced. I find my memory and problem solving abilities really drop after 30+ hours without sleep. Maybe it is a good tool for the depressed, but i would not suggest it to those looking to boost otherwise healthy/normal minds.

> Mood yes. Ask the kids who rave all night.

I'm not sure if you're joking or not, but I think it's pretty safe to say there are bigger things contributing to "ravers" euphoria than sleep deprivation. Like the music, alcohol. Or in many popular European clubs, the recreational drugs.

That's not to say I'm suggesting people need to on something to be having a good time, but your "raver" example is a pretty poor one if it's not meant as a joke.

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#56

Post by [deleted] »

sandworm101 wrote: post #44
update wrote: post #12

> Tübingen who was hospitalized for depression and claimed that she normally kept her symptoms in check by taking all-night bike rides. He subsequently demonstrated in a group of depressed patients that a night of complete sleep deprivation produced an immediate, significant improvement in mood in about 60 percent of the group. I thought this bit was neat. I'd heard that sleep deprivation can bring on a feeling of eu…

Mood yes. Ask the kids who rave all night. But cognition? Im not convinced. I find my memory and problem solving abilities really drop after 30+ hours without sleep. Maybe it is a good tool for the depressed, but i would not suggest it to those looking to boost otherwise healthy/normal minds.

[deleted]

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#57

Post by rubicon33 »

_m8fo wrote: post #4

I wonder how much coffee plays into this. I've yet to meet someone who sleeps consistently more than 8 hours per night who feels the need to drink coffee. edit: 8 quality hours of sleep, e.g. you wake up and you're not tired.

huh? I sleep 8 hours a night and I definitely "need" coffee. It's a chemical thing at this point.

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#58

Post by benevol »

If you suffer from depression, you should thoroughly research LSD and then make your fully informed personal decision.

On the negative side, this substance may become one of the reasons the pharmaceutical industry will lose recurrent revenues from disappearing dependency on expensive anti-depressants.

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#59

Post by erikpukinskis »

pharrington wrote: post #49
update wrote: post #12

> Tübingen who was hospitalized for depression and claimed that she normally kept her symptoms in check by taking all-night bike rides. He subsequently demonstrated in a group of depressed patients that a night of complete sleep deprivation produced an immediate, significant improvement in mood in about 60 percent of the group. I thought this bit was neat. I'd heard that sleep deprivation can bring on a feeling of eu…

Your anecdotal experience is far from uncommon. For the article to even imply this as any sort of cure for depression, though, massively misinterprets the small amount of research on this. edit: And as a sibling comment mentioned, we do know that cognition suffers immensely when sleep-deprived.

Yea, it works when you want to trade cognition for action. If I don't need to make any tricky decisions, and would benefit from just moving a bunch of items forward, that's when sleep deprivation (all nighters) can work for me.

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#60

Post by Houshalter »

update wrote: post #12

> Tübingen who was hospitalized for depression and claimed that she normally kept her symptoms in check by taking all-night bike rides. He subsequently demonstrated in a group of depressed patients that a night of complete sleep deprivation produced an immediate, significant improvement in mood in about 60 percent of the group. I thought this bit was neat. I'd heard that sleep deprivation can bring on a feeling of eu…

I noticed that stupid jokes and stuff seem much funnier to me when I am sleep deprived. One time I pulled an all nighter and then looked at some meme subreddits. I was laughing incredibly hard to stuff I wouldn't even normally find amusing.

This seems to be a well known phenomenon. There's a whole subreddit called 3am jokes (https://www.reddit.com/r/3amjokes/) for this.

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