BEHANDLUNG DEPRESSIVER ERKRANKUNGEN MIT MANIPULATION DES SCHLAF-WACH-RHYTHMUS

Sleep deprivation has been regarded as a beneficial treatment modality for about 60% of patients with Major Depressive Disorder. Unfortunately, however, more than 80% of the improved patients relapse into depression after the next night of sleep. In the present study we tried to prevent rapid relapse into depression after successful total sleep deprivation (TSD) by treating 33 patients suffering from a Major Depressive Disorder according to DSM-III-R with a combination of sleep deprivation with consecutive sleep-phase advance for one week. Advancing the sleep period to 17 hours until 24 hours following TSD and then gradually shifting back (by one hour daily) the sleep period to the normal phase position (23 hours until 6 hours) prevented in 61% of these patients from relapsing into depression. Thus, the combination of sleep deprivation with consecutive sleep phase advance has been proven to be an effective antidepressant treatment besides other well established antidepressive treatment modalities.