Study puts rest to bed

SLEEP deprivation may offer a new treatment for depression. An analysis of 36 years of studies by the University of Pennsylvania suggests temporarily depriving patients of sleep can be effective in the short-term.

The research, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, looked at 66 studies on people with depression who were deprived of sleep in a clinical setting.

Sleep deprivation was found to temporarily improve symptoms in 50 per cent of patients. Partial sleep deprivation (three to four hours’ sleep) was just as effective.