Sleep Deprivation in social phobia and generalized anxiety disorder.

BACKGROUND

Sleep deprivation has been shown to improve depressive symptoms in some patients with major depressive disorder, but it has not been tested in patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) or social phobia (SP).

METHODS

To determine if sleep deprivation altered anxiety or depressive symptoms in patients with GAD (n = 7) or SP (n = 8), we sleep deprived patients and normal controls (n = 18) for one night.

RESULTS

On one measure of anxiety, GAD patients improved compared with controls, but there were otherwise no significant change differences between controls and SP or GAD patients.

CONCLUSIONS

The lack of benefit is consistent with previous findings that sleep deprivation provides no benefit to patients with other anxiety disorders. Sleep deprivation may be a biological intervention that distinguishes anxiety from affective disorders.