Weekly Mind Reader: Could Sleep Help Solve Mania?

The Primary Care Companion for CNS Disorders has published a study that shows sleep duration might show greater improvements in patients with acute mania compared to those with major depressive disorder during hospitalization.

Could Sleep Be The Secret To Better Mania Treatment?

A new study appearing in The Primary Care Companion for CNS Disorders compares the sleep patterns of patients hospitalized for a manic episode versus those with major depressive disorder (MDD). They looked at:

• How long patients slept after they were admitted to the hospital.
• When they were discharged.
• And how this changed during their stay.

Researchers also checked if sleep duration was related to how long patients stayed in the hospital.

They collected data from patients admitted to a psychiatric unit between 2018 and 2021. Nurses recorded the sleep duration times. They found that patients with mania tended to stay in the hospital longer and were given higher doses of certain medications compared to those with MDD. However, there was no significant difference in sleep duration between the two groups at admission or discharge.

Interestingly, in patients with mania, shorter sleep duration at admission was linked to longer hospital stays. This suggests that sleep duration might be related to the severity of manic symptoms. However, this correlation wasn’t seen in patients with MDD.

The study suggests that sleep duration could be important in managing manic episodes. It might even help predict how long a patient needs to stay in the hospital. More research is needed to understand how sleep patterns affect the outcomes of patients with bipolar disorder.

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