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For two decades, Francesco Benedetti, who heads the psychiatry and clinical psychobiology unit at San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, has been investigating so-called wake therapy, in combination with bright light exposure and lithium, as a means of treating depression where drugs have often failed. As a result, psychiatrists in the USA, the UK and other European countries are starting to take notice, launching variations of it in their own clinics. These 'chronotherapies' seem to work by kick-starting a sluggish biological clock; in doing so, they're also shedding new light on the underlying pathology of depression, and on the function of sleep more generally.
"Sleep deprivation really has opposite effects in healthy people and those with depression," says Benedetti. If you're healthy and you don't sleep, you'll feel in a bad mood. But if you're depressed, it can prompt an immediate improvement in mood, and in cognitive abilities. But, Benedetti adds, there's a catch: once you go to sleep and catch up on those missed hours of sleep, you'll have a 95% chance of relapse.
So pulling more all-nighters makes me feel better?
Source: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180123-can-staying-awake-beat-depression
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2018, @07:16AM
It actually makes sense. Depression is inability or not think about bad thoughts. It's inability to concentrate on the positives, so you keep thinking about some negative crap. I know, it happened to me. Now, sleep deprivation tends to kill your brain, or at least your ability to think clearly. So if you stay awake long enough, eventually you will stop thinking about the thoughts that are causing your depression.
But anyway, depression is something people need to learn to fix in their own lives. It's mostly self-induced (like addictions), and the cure is too.