In Sleepless Nights, a Hope for Treating Depression | Hacker News Reader

In Sleepless Nights, a Hope for Treating Depression

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

28 pointstokenadult7 comments

I think this question is probably misframed. The first-order effects of sleep deprivation are comparable to alcohol intoxication. In so far as that is the case, a more accurate model for a post-partum mother's mood after a night up is that she's disinhibited. Another model might be the moderately true reality that she just fulfilled her role as she believes it to be: to stay up with that crying baby when needed. Encouraging sleep-deprived young mothers to stay up sounds like uniquely bad advice. There are plenty of pathological mood disorders where part of the syndrome includes periods of elevated mood. That doesn't make it less pathological.

This is an intriguing comment, but I'm not sure it's valid in all cases. From my experience, getting up to feed a baby isn't something a woman does to fulfill her role - it's something she does to get sleep. I could not sleep if my baby was crying, or even just restless. My husband could. I could feed the baby; my husband could not. So I was the one who woke up to feed the baby. (Fortunately, feeding him put me right back to sleep, most of the time, due to the drowsiness-inducing effects of oxytocin.) I get the same kind of elevated mood from staying up all night programming or writing, not because it fulfills my role as I believe it to be - though it does, at least when it goes well - but because there is a physiological chain of events that leads to the mood elevation. I'm glad researchers are working on figuring out exactly what that chain of events is, because as a lifelong insomniac, it's a phenomenon I've noticed before, and I've often wished I could bottle it.

I wonder if melatonin imbalance (stuff that controls our circadian rhythms) could be a cause for postpartum depression.

For one thing, this is definitely a short term fix, but as the article notes, skipping REM sleep will crash upon ye real hard when you nap. Also, add in the fact if you crash into sleep pretty late into the night and wake up early without adequate sleep, that nasty grogginess of a ":-(" is somewhat explained in the light of this study.

This other journal article related to the subject is quite interesting as well: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2468214/ It delves into the same concept of sleep deprivation except they focused on the Amygdalae (processing and memory of emotional reactions).

This article misrepresents the facts a little. The basic findings of this article have been well-known to even medical students for at least a decade, if not longer. It's hardly some obscure finding that only a select few specialists know about.

I have no professional insights, just empirical observations:

Everyone of us who pulled an all nighter knows that you feel really good at some point in the morning.

But also every one of us who ever was around a person with sleep deprivation knows that this other one was very likely grumpy and miserable for the rest of the day.

As far as I understand it, the euphoria is induced by an increase in the dopamine levels, leading to an inhibition of the ACC. But for all I know depression is related to serotonin imbalance which would kick in as soon as the dopamine rush is gone.

Again, I am no professional, just tell me if I am mistaken.

I was pretty sure lack of sleep was a leading contributor to depression. I know it affects the bipolar and there is the associated loss of vitamins which lead to depression.

I have an excuse to stay up all night playing video games, watching TV and reading!

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