Sleep Apnea Treatment May Alleviate Depression

A new study suggests that depressive symptoms are very common among people who suffer from obstructive sleep apnea. Researchers suggest that sleep apnea treatment may alleviate depression.

The study was commissioned in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. Researchers have good news for some some of you that are suffering from depression: they may not be depressed to begin with it. Suicidal thoughts are not necessarily associated with actual depression, researchers say, but a mild form of depression may settle in for those with common sleep disorders. Moreover, researchers found that the symptoms can be alleviated once sleep apenea is treated.

Continuous positive airway pressure therapy is the most common treatment for obstructive sleep apnea disorders. The author of the study, David Hillman, professor at the University of Western Australia, said that by treating obstructive sleep apnea, dramatic improvement was noticed in patients with depressive symptoms and suicidial thoughts. Hillman added that the study he conducted sheds some light on sleep apnea, a condition which he believes is severely underdiagnosed in the field, or misdiagnosed as other conditions, including depression.

Regular snoring, disrupted sleep patterns, long daytime naps, and pauses in breathing are some of the common symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea.

The study analyzed more than 400 patients suspected of sleep apnea from a hospital centre in Australia. The average age of the study participants was of 52 years. Nearly 300 patients were diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea and were prescribed continuous positive airway pressure therapy. The study found that about 75% of the sleep apnea sufferers also had depressive symptoms.

David Hillman noted that the depressive symptoms increased shoulder to shoulder with the severity of the obstructive sleep apnea. After therapy, the study found that only 4% of the sleep apnea patients who underwent therapy still showed signs of clinical depression. While the rests who were cured of the condition only showed peeps of depression here and there.

After three months of treatment, the 40 patients who showed signs of self-harm and openly reported that they would be better off dead, none of them reported persisting signs of self-harm and suicidal thoughts.

According to David Hillman and his research them, the results calls for the importance of better diagnoses for people with obstructive sleep apnea, which can be easily mistaken with clinical depression.
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