Sleep Deprivation, Psychosis and Mental Efficiency

By Stanley Coren, Ph.D. | March 1, 1998

Dr. Coren is professor and head of the Human Neuropsychology and Perception Laboratory of the psychology department of the University of British Columbia.

He showed the same increasing moodiness and paranoia that Gardner did. On his last day, a neurologist was called to examine Tripp before sending him home. When Tripp looked up at this doctor in his dark, old-fashioned suit, he had the delusion that the doctor was really an undertaker who was about to bury him alive. Overtaken with fear, he let loose a scream and bolted for the door. Half-dressed, Tripp ran down the hall with doctors and psychologists in pursuit. He could no longer distinguish the difference between reality and nightmare.

This same pattern of mental deterioration that mimicks psychotic symptoms appears in several more systematic studies of sleep deprivation and extreme sleep debt. Thus, prolonged sleep deprivation does lead to the appearance of serious mental symptoms. In addition, even moderate amounts of sleep deprivation can lead to losses in mental efficiency that can threaten public and personal safety.

(According to a 1995 report by the U.S. Department of Transportation, 100,000 sleep-related traffic accidents claim some 1,500 American lives each year. The National Commission on Sleep Disorders Research has reported that sleep-related accidents, and sleep disorders which impact work productivity, cost the American economy between $100 and $150 billion each year-Ed.)

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by Stephen Diamond | August 05, 2010 8:50 PM EDT

What about the recent study finding that sleeping more than seven hours increases the incidence of cardiovascular disease. "Study participants who said they slept nine hours or longer a day were one-and-a-half times more likely than seven-hour sleepers to develop cardiovascular disease."

by Kevin Morton | May 30, 2010 7:33 AM EDT

Very interesting bits about the contrast of modern society to the natural sleep cycles. Those types of studies have always fascinated me.

Sleep deprivation is really a silent killer in our world, and your bit at the end about sleep-related traffic accidents from the NTSB is very conservative number-wise. Dr. Dement and Mark Rosekind, newly appointed to the NTSB, give estimates closer to 1-2 million drowsy driving related accidents annually. Dr. Dement and his Sleep and Dreams class at Stanford University have been trying to raise awareness of the dangers of sleep deprivation for 40 years now, and hopefully we can get those numbers down in the foreseeable future.

References

Coren S (1996a), Sleep Thieves. New York: Free Press.

Coren S (1996b), Daylight savings time and traffic accidents. New Eng J Med 334:924.

Coren S (1996c), Accidental death and the shift to daylight savings time. Percept Mot Skills 83:921-922.

Dement WC (1992), The Sleepwatchers. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Alumni Association.

Palinkas LA, Suedfeld P, Steel GD (1995), Psychological functioning among members of a small polar expedition. Avia Space Environ Med 66:943-950.

Ross JJ (1965), Neurological findings after prolonged sleep deprivation. Arch Neurol 12:399-403.
Webb WB, Agnew HW (1975), Are we chronically sleep deprived? Bull the Psychonomic Soc 6:47-48.

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Sleep Deprivation, Psychosis and Mental Efficiency

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