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SarahC 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.
I don't think it's everybody -- certainly there are cases of severe depression where the person sleeps 20 hours a day.
Maybe it's more that sleep deprivation can masquerade as depression. That is, if you're tired, slow, unmotivated, hopeless, lethargic, plunged in gloom, and you're sleeping four or five hours a night, your problems might be related to your sleep patterns.
Sure, fatigue can cause unhappiness, but I don't think it looks like clinical depression. You seem to be holding yourself up as an example. Did anyone think you clinically depressed when sleep deprived?