Depression: relationships to sleep paralysis and other sleep disturbances in a community sample
Journal of Sleep Research September 1, 2007 Mariana Szklo‐coxe, Terry Young, Laurel Finn et al.
Depression is strongly associated with rapid eye movement-related sleep disturbances, particularly sleep paralysis, even after accounting for anxiety. In a community sample of 866 adults, severe depression increased the odds of sleep paralysis by about 500%. Depression also raised the odds of cataplexy in non-anxious participants nine-fold, but not in anxious ones. Anxiety partially explained depression's link to hypnagogic/hypnopompic hallucinations and was more related than depression to automatic behavior. Insomnia and sleepiness only partly mediated these associations. Recognizing these often-neglected sleep disturbances may help characterize depression more fully.