Antidepressive Wirkung des partiellen Schlafentzuges während der 1. Hälfte der Nacht

Abstract

In addition to previous investigations another modification of sleep-deprivation (SD) was studied in 28 endogenous depressives: SD during the 1st half of the night. From the day of deprivation – in the self-rating from the 4th day – up to 1 week later a therapeutic effect can be observed. The psychic part of the symptomatology was more reduced than the somatic one. Compared to total and partial SD during the 2nd half of the night, there is, on average, a smaller therapeutic effect which occurs later. The diurnal variation of the depressive symptomatology is less influenced. According to the period without sleep, the circadian course of the heart rate is less and differently modified by SD during the 1st half of the night. Only an existing diurnal variation (before SD) is a predictor of the prompt effect. Implications for the mechanism of the therapeutic SD were discussed. For clinical practice, SD during the 2nd half of the night is the method of choice.

Treatment of Seasonal Affective Disorder with Light in the Evening

“…In those studies patients were asked to wake up daily at 5 a.m. to begin light treatment (Rosenthal et a!, 1984(Rosenthal et a!, , 1985. This resulted in early-morning sleep deprivation, which has been shown to have an anti depressant effect (Goetze & Tolle, 1981). In the present study patients were requested to sleep until their regular waking-up time, or later if they preferred.…”

Environmetal and Behavioral Influences on Affective Illness

“…The timing of sleep and wakefulness may be a critical factor in patients' responses (36). The results of several experiments can be interpreted as showing that being awake in the latter half of the night, whether o r not sleep is reduced, is necessary for the antidepressant effect (31,32,37).…”

Periodic Sleep Deprivation in Drug-Refractory Depression

“…In comparison, sleep deprivation in the first half of the night [Goetze and Tolle, 1981] is less effective therapeutically, and selective REM sleep deprivation [Vogel e tal., 1968;Vogel, 1981] is impracticable outside elaborate sleep laboratories. The course of sleep depriva tion for 1 night can be made easier for the patient by various measures [Rudolf and Tolle, 1978a], in particular.…”