Can Sleep Deprivation Be a Good Thing?

Have you ever had a bad day where you feel like you just want to crawl into bed and cry your eyes out? It’s okay everyone does from time to time, sometimes we even cry some much until we literally can’t cry anymore. Don’t you feel so much better afterwards though, to the point where you just fall asleep at the drop of a dime? I get it I do sleep after a really rough day can be so therapeutic, but what if it’s not? Well therapeutic to some at least.

In the case study by Roy-Byrne the experimenters have come across the claim that people with panic disorders actually benefit from being sleep deprived over a night. So they set out to test the effects of sleep deprivation among patients that suffer from panic disorders and then compare them with patients who are depressed and have been observed in the unit on a prior occasion. They planned on monitoring their data using EEG due to known abnormalities that are caused by the panic disorder combined with lack of sleep.

Patients with panic disorder went one night without sleep and performed an EEG the next day, their mood and behavior were scored every other hour by a nurse, the patients also self-rated themselves based on mood and cognition.

The results show that the depressed patients showed improvement with depression but not so much with anxiety, the patients who suffered from panic disorders didn’t show any significant difference, and the depression patients benefited more overall than the patients with panic disorders.

I honestly for one do not like this study, like honestly even if this information is sound and the logic behind it is credible it is not a healthy way to fix depression or panic disorders. Going without sleep can cause a huge deficit in your mental and physical performance in the long run. I’m not sure if it works that fast but wouldn’t the improvement the patients be seeing come from the rally effect, a symptom of sleep deprivation?

I don’t think the public can benefit from this article, I mean it is interesting and different to say the least but fixing a crippling disorder by doing further harm to your body isn’t really benefiting anyone. I mean I guess you can say by knowing to not, not sleeping is what you can take away from the article.

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