Sleep Deprivation May Reduce Depression

Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have found that sleep deprivation under controlled inpatient settings can improve depression in about 50% of patients according to the first meta-analysis in 30 years. Results published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry say that partial sleep deprivation (three to four hours) followed by a regular day, was as effective as 36 hours of sleep deprivation for depression; medication did not influence this study. The purpose of the study was to find achieve relief for the 16 million patient who have had a major depressive episode in the past year.

In 2013, out of 242 million adults in the US, 16% of 242 million U.S. adults filled one or more prescriptions for psychiatric drugs. Although anti-depressants are the most common treatment for depression they can take weeks to become effective. Whereas sleep deprivation has also proved in several studies to be effective in as little as one day.

Study senior author Philip Gehrman, PhD, an associate professor of Psychiatry and member of the Penn Sleep Center stated: "More than 30 years since the discovery of the antidepressant effects of sleep deprivation, we still do not have an effective grasp on precisely how effective the treatment is and how to achieve the best clinical results. Our analysis precisely reports how effective sleep deprivation is and in which populations it should be administered."

The team pulled data from a group of 66 out of 2000 studies from the past 36-years in an effort calculate how depression might be affected by total vs early or late partial sleep deprivation. The patients chosen had depressive or manic episodes, or a combination of both.

Lead author Elaine Boland, PhD, a clinical associate and research psychologist at the Cpl. Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center said, "These studies in our analysis show that sleep deprivation is effective for many populations. Regardless of how the response was quantified, how the sleep deprivation was delivered, or the type of depression the subject was experiencing, we found a nearly equivalent response rate."

As always researchers note that more research is needed to identify how sleep deprivation quickly causes reductions in depression severity. Additionally, they’ll need to include assessments of the patients most likely to benefit from sleep deprivation treatment.