But Not TOO Many ZZZzzzzs
In the journal of Molecular Psychiatry, researchers discuss their study, the first of its kind, of the relationship between schizophrenia spectrum disorder and abnormalities in sleep and rest/activity/rhythm. Wrist monitors provided measurements in 250 people—150 with schizophrenia—whether in outpatient settings or psychiatric hospitals. Because management of schizophrenia symptoms may be used as management, some patients may be getting too much sleep, which can have a negative effects. “It’s important to be mindful of how drugs that we prescribe to patients affect their health more broadly. Our study shows that a 12- to 15-hour sleep can be harmful, and it’s important to avoid overprescribing sedatives and use the lowest dose possible,” stated senior study author Dr. Fabio Ferrarelli, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh.
The study concluded, “Our findings demonstrated that residential and outpatient SSD had both shared and unique abnormalities in sleep/rest-activity-rhythm measures vs. healthy controls and relative to one another, which also contributed to the patients’ negative symptom severity. Building on these findings, future work will help establish whether improving some of these measures may ameliorate the quality of life and clinical symptoms of schizophrenia spectrum disorder patients.”
Read the journal article.
