Sleep therapy

The sleep therapy or duration of anesthesia was a common in the 1920s and 1930s form of treatment of schizophrenia .

The Swiss psychiatrist Jakob Klaesi (1883–1980) reported in 1922 in the Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie about attempts to use the barbiturate somnifen to carry out five to ten-day sleep cures in schizophrenic patients. Since he gave some positive results, the method spread in German-speaking countries. The treatment was very complex and, if insufficiently cared for, led to frequent deaths (in over ten percent of those treated).

From 1936 sleep therapy was replaced by the new shock therapies , including the forerunners of today's electroconvulsive therapy .

Today, sleep therapy is often also understood to mean the treatment of sleep-related breathing disorders (SBAS), such as obstructive or central sleep apnea , obesity hypoventilation syndrome or Cheyne-Stokes breathing . These diseases lead to repeated respiratory arrests and insufficient breathing as well as to a fragmentation of sleep. The consequences can include daytime sleepiness and reduced performance, but also high blood pressure, heart attack or stroke. For therapy, the patient receives i. d. Usually a special ventilator (sleep therapy device), which is connected to a ventilation mask via a hose. Patients with SBAS should use the mask and sleep therapy device every night. Sleep therapy leads to a significant improvement in the tendency to fall asleep and in wakefulness during the day.

literature

• Hans Bangen: History of the drug therapy of schizophrenia. Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-927408-82-4 .