Sleep Deprivation and Depression
In such a busy and competitive society as the U.S., most of us think that sleep is waste of time. We believe that minimize sleeping time can prevent us from falling behind because the world is still changing or someone is working so hard when we are sleeping. In our pursuit of success or happiness, sleeping time probably is thing that we sacrifice the most. As we overemphasize the importance of being successful, we ignore or even forgot the importance of good sleep. Sleep deprivation, which simply means not having enough sleep, can bring up dire consequences (Dement & Vaughan, 2009). It can not only cause instant danger while driving but also be slow poison in view of that it can cause mental disease like depression, which leads to suicidal ideation. A few years ago, when I was diagnosed with severe depression, I just simply assumed the reason was that I was too incompetent to deal with school work. Then, I had no doubt that I got sleep deprived because sleep deprivation has been long considered as the symptom of depression. In fact, there can be causal relationship the other way. Sleep deprivation can trigger depression in psychological and physical aspects; depression then worsens the sleep quality and results in a vicious cycle.
The reason why sleep deprivation can trigger depression psychologically is that it lower our cognitive ability that are involved in the thinking process of accomplishing tasks and making judgments, especially self-judgment. Perhaps we think that it is quite natural to feel upset when we are dissatisfied with our own performance; being temporarily in a bad mood signifies little. However, depression is different from that and more serious than that. According to Jonathan Stern, a professor in Biology at SFSU, depression is a mental illness characterized by sadness and despair accompanied by low self-esteem and loss of interest in any activity. We rarely connect depression to poor sleep on account...