Comment by caseymarquis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by caseymarquis | Hacker News Reader

This article confuses depression and bipolar disorder quite a bit. They're inducing mania through sleep deprivation in patients with bipolar disorder going through a period of depression. This is somewhat dangerous, as mania can have severe consequences. The article even states that there's a 95% relapse into depression for those not taking lithium. Only people with BPD take lithium. It's not about the lithium, it's about that population having BPD.

DO NOT TRY THIS IF YOU HAVE BIPOLAR DISORDER WITHOUT MEDICAL SUPERVISION. Inducing mania could ruin your life. If you don't have BPD, then this likely won't work anyway.

I have several family members with BPD. Irregular sleep schedule is a major warning sign that mania is coming on, and interrupted sleep schedule can induce mania.

I can see why you might try this in a controlled setting, and I'm not saying it doesn't work. I'm just saying that this is very dangerous, and should not be done without qualified medical supervision.

It's probably worth noting that bipolar disorder and manic depression are the same condition. In other words, bipolar disorder is a form of depression, though they could have been more clear and said "other forms of depression" in certain places.

In recent writing it's usually seen as more clear to treat them as distinct (though related) disorders rather than bipolar being a subset of depression, although that usage is still common. The ICD, for example, classifies "Bipolar affective disorder" (F31) and "Recurrent depressive disorder" (F33) as two distinct disorders under the parent category "Mood [affective] disorders".

This should be the top comment! I flagged this article because it is giving bad medical advice.

Please don't use uppercase for emphasis on HN. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Understood. My bad.

Just to clarify: when you say BPD here, do you mean bipolar disorder, or borderline personality disorder? I've only known it as the latter (and a quick Google search agrees), but from context I assume you mean the former?

He means the former. You cannot induce a personality disorder, its a lifetime of trained patterned thinking/action/deficit.

What Shikadi said. Also, if you tend toward bipolar (manic/depressive episodes), maintaining a constant sleep schedule can keep you out of the extreme highs and lows.

Good point. Losing too much sleep as a bipolar can interfere with patience and decision- making once you get into those highs.

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