If your circadian rhythm is constantly being thrown off by your terrible, no good, absolutely miserable nights of sleep, congratulations, you might also have a whole new kind of depression. It’s called circadian depression, a term coined by researchers at the University of Sydney in Australia, who published their findings in the British Journal of Psychiatry and detailed them in a press release.
The researchers analyzed data from over 11,000 participants with severe or recurrent depression. After a while, the researchers figured these people probably weren’t suffering from your run-of-the-mill doom-and-gloom. Their internal body clocks seem fundamentally out of whack.
They all seem to be suffering from the same debilitating combo of traits, like seasonal mood shifts, severe morning fatigue, delayed sleep timing, and something called “social jet lag, which is when your weekend sleep schedule looks completely different than your workweek schedule. For instance, they might sleep for five hours on a weekday and 11 hours on a weekend.
Scientists Just Identified a New Type of Depression Linked to Your Body’s Internal Clock
As you can imagine, that kind of life comes with tremendous downsides. In this case, the study notes that people with circadian depression are more prone to hitting rock bottom early in life. They might also suffer from mania at higher rates, along with psychosis, and tend to have suicidal thoughts.
If that wasn’t enough, they also have elevated genetic risks for other ailments that blaze their own paths of destruction, like inflammation that leads to all sorts of health issues, ADHD, and heart issues.
Sadly, common treatments like SSRIs and SNRIs don’t often work on these people since the condition stems from a misfiring of their internal clocks. Traditional antidepressants can’t fix that.
Instead of a pill that fixes everything, researchers suggest fixing your chronobiology. Light therapy might help. Taking melatonin before bed could help you knock out. Maintain a stricter bedtime and bedtime routine. You know, all the stuff you’ve probably already tried. Hey, can’t hurt to try it all again.
The post There’s a New Type of Depression, and It Could Explain Why You Can’t Sleep at Night appeared first on VICE.
