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Sleep deprivation a cure for depression?

« H E » email
posted Monday, 12 March 2007

You'll feel better after a good sleep - or will you? A Kiwi-born researcher says skipping a night's sleep can in fact cure depression. Adam Dudding reports.

In the late 1960s, an eccentric German school teacher suffering from depression made a curious discovery. She found that when her illness was particularly acute she could temporarily cure herself by getting on her bike late in the evening and going for a night-long cycle ride. After a night without sleep her crippling depression would have disappeared.

Doctors at the hospital she attended in the university town of Tubingen were bemused by her claims: after all, depressives usually complain they don't get enough sleep, rather than too much. But in 1968 a doctoral student, Burkhard Pflug, decided to see if her "cure" could work for others, and set up clinical trials. The results, which have been often replicated since, were astounding: within hours of just one night's sleep deprivation, about 60 per cent of patients will snap out of even the deepest depression. Even today, new-generation anti-depressants take weeks to pull someone out of depression if they work at all. (The bicycling itself appears to have been a red herring, important only in that it was a way to stay awake.)

More...   © Fairfax New Zealand Limited 2007.

Comment:  
While this may sound odd it is, at least partly, supported by Turkish research showing sleep deprivation enhances response to antidepressants.

tags: clinical depression  sleep deprivation  

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