MW: In biology, there’s almost never a unidirectional direction of interaction. Much seems to be bi-directional, and I have no doubt that it’s the case with sleep and psychiatric disorders. But the flow of traffic in that two-way street could be going more dominantly in one direction than the other.
Can you test that? Well, it’s ethically debated, but some researchers have taken, for example, groups of patients with bipolar depression and experimentally sleep-deprived them in a laboratory. As a consequence, they causally triggered the onset of a manic phase. This establishes that sleep loss can act as a causal trigger that instigates certain psychiatric issues.
I second that. If I go 2-3 nights without at least 8 hrs of sleep - I become hyper and very aggressive. Another member of my family (who suffers from another mental disorder), will go into full-blown schizoid episodes after 3 nights of lack of sleep.
ORIGINAL COMMENT
MW: In biology, there’s almost never a
unidirectional direction of interaction. Much seems to be
bi-directional, and I have no doubt that it’s the case with sleep and
psychiatric disorders. But the flow of traffic in that two-way street
could be going more dominantly in one direction than the other.
Can you test that? Well, it’s ethically debated, but some researchers
have taken, for example, groups of patients with bipolar depression and
experimentally sleep-deprived them in a laboratory. As a consequence,
they causally triggered the onset of a manic phase. This establishes
that sleep loss can act as a causal trigger that instigates certain
psychiatric issues.
I second that. If I go 2-3 nights without at least 8 hrs of sleep - I become hyper and very aggressive. Another member of my family (who suffers from another mental disorder), will go into full-blown schizoid episodes after 3 nights of lack of sleep.