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Yvain comments on Rationality Drugs - Less Wrong
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I'm skeptical of this. Yes, five hours of sleep is bad for your mental health, but usually in a different direction. Did you have depressive symptoms that year? A key symptom of depression is lack of willpower - depressives don't normally have the willpower not to sleep. Quite the opposite, they sleep more the than normal. This would solve simple sleep deprivation. It's possible that they lack something more specific that normal people are able to get by sleeping, but even that does not sound terribly likely to me.
ETA: As various people comment, this is largely backwards. I particularly regret suggesting that people who spend a lot of time in bed get useful sleep. So maybe sleep deprivation contributes to some of the symptoms of depression. But there are other symptoms and I am skeptical that the two are confused.
Depressed people can have either insomnia or hypersomnia; insomnia is significantly more common. Depression-related insomnia is usually "terminal" - people wake up very early and can't get back to sleep.
Strangely enough, there have been some studies showing that depriving depressed people of sleep has a strong positive effect on their mood, but of course then they're too sleep-deprived to enjoy it.