Treat Depression With (Sleep) Deprivation

Research now supports what I discovered my junior year in high school, when I first sucked down black coffee after midnight: sleep deprivation alleviates depression. I am ecstatic. This is lifestyle validation.

Documented in 1,700 patients, published in 70 papers – no way, I keep thinking, no way. Using imaging, neuroscientists have found that the part of your brain that is overactive when you’re depressed calms when you’re deprived of sleep – and then acts up again after you’ve had your fill.

The New York Times article goes on to argue that a few extra hours of sleeplessness will free a new mother from the clutches of severe postpartum depression. Imagine, then, what those hours could do for a college student. This couldn’t be more relevant to us; depression affects over 10% of the population, and Cornell’s recent wave of suicides confirms our suspicions (or perhaps just mine) that college campuses – especially large, pressure-cooking ones – are often hotbeds of mental instability.

–Trisha Jain

That said, there are reasons that sleep deprivation hasn’t been publicized as The Panacea for depression (well, reasons beyond the fact that it would be incredibly trivializing to even suggest that sleep deprivation might have prevented a suicide). They’re significant enough that I should mention them and obvious enough that I won’t.

Red Bull keep us light and aflight. “No one wishes they’d slept more during college.”