CAN NEGATIVE SELF-SCHEMES IN DEPRESSIVES BE ALTERED THROUGH SLEEP-DEPRIVATION

This paper addresses the question whether negative cognitive style rep resents a state or trait variable of depressive patients. For this rea son, it studies the influence of sleep deprivation on negative self-sc hemes of those patients.10 patients suffering from DSM-III-R major dep ression were compared with 10 age- and sex-matched controls on a task for rating the self-descriptiveness of positive and negative adjective s as well as a subsequent word recognition task. Three sessions were i nvolved. an initial session (baseline), the second following a night o f sleep deprivation, and the third after a succesive full night's slee p. During the baseline examination, depressives showed a relatively ne gative cognitive bias; that is, the same number of positive and negati ve self-scheme elements. In comparison to controls, they showed signif icantly more negative and significantly less positive self-scheme elem ents. The same pattern emerged in a word recognition task fur the numb er of recognized self-scheme elements. These variables indicated no ch ange in the depressive group following sleep deprivation. Depressive s ubjects' reaction times on self-descriptiveness ratings were significa ntly longer for positive than for negative self-scheme elements at the baseline session. The opposite was true for controls. Here, a sleep d eprivation effect was evident. There was no longer a difference in the speed of information processing for positive as compared to negative self-scheme elements. This applied to both depressive and control grou ps. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science BV.