> I thought this was pretty interesting and goes into a hypothesis of why ECT might be effective (in the context of sleep deprivation being effective) https://a

> I thought this was pretty interesting and goes into a hypothesis of why ECT might be effective (in the context of sleep deprivation being effective) https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/sleep-is-the-mate-of-d https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/sleep-is-the-mate-of-d... This is entirely subjective but I suspect there might be something else at play than anything mentioned in that blog post. (edit: that is, when it comes to sleep deprivation vs depression.) I've had to go through depression myself, and also noticed that my mood is different when I'm sleep-deprived. The mood when sleep-deprived would often be elevated, assuming I didn't have to force myself to do something that required concentration. I'm not sure that state is so much an absence of depression as it might be a slightly hyper mood. (I once read someone's comment on the topic somewhere that it seems like the depression gets replaced by some kind of a hypomania-like state rather than a normal, non-depressed mood. I don't even remember where that comment was and it was also just speculation, but it rang a bell.) I've noticed that kind of slightly hyper mood has also happened when sleep deprived outside of a depressive episode. (Perhaps it is in compensation for feeling tired when you for some reason psych yourself to still staying active, or something.) It might feel preferable to a depressed state but I'm slightly sceptical of the idea that something with a similar mechanism could be used directly to return to a normal non-depressive state. I don't know about ECT though.