Question: How much sleep would you say if we missed would make us more likely to be schizophrenic?

Jack barton answered on 18 Jun 2017:

This is a good question but it is hard to say “how much” sleep loss may lead to symptoms of schizophrenia. In a couple of studies over the past decade, with healthy individuals, there was evidence that a single night of sleep loss might lead to increases in hallucinatory experiences and sleep loss of over 56 hours lead to increases in paranoia. One vague study in the 1950s claimed that the severity of psychosis (e.g. hallucinations and delusions) increased in the line with the number of hours of total sleep deprivation – up to 10 days. However, this hasn’t been replicated and it is important to note that sleep loss is linked to many different mental health issues (e.g. depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder).

It’s also important to note that certain symptoms of schizophrenia may be more strongly linked to sleep loss. To also make it that bit more complicated it may not be as simple as fewer hours sleep. For example, sleep might appear relatively normal (e.g. we sleep as long as we usually would) but changes in the type of sleep (e.g. light, deep or REM) may end up being more important in understanding a link between sleep and mental health.

My own view is that sleep loss alone is unlikely to produce symptoms of psychosis unless we’re severely deprived (e.g. days without sleep). The majority of us do not experience such as deprivation unless we’re going through a very stressful time. Instead sleep loss, or changes in the structure of sleep, likely work alongside pre-existing vulnerabilities which may be biological or environmental in nature. The job of my PhD is to start to understand this messy question in more detail!