Heh, sorry to jump in so late with a quote from the original post, but I haven’t been having a lot of luck connecting to the forum lately.
Not only do I strongly agree with Milod’s comment, in which he states that lucid dreaming (from his experience) tends more to provide relaxation and restfulness than exhaustion, but I also feel it’s relevant to raise the point that lucid dreaming does not increase the amount of REM sleep you experience during the night. Normal dreams occur at regular intervals throughout sleep, and lucid dreaming, when achieved, simply enhances the existing ND to involve a cognitive (or conscious) aspect.
I agree that the media is greatly responsible for perpetuating erroneous stereotypes as it relates to people with depression. I fight hard to educate the public about depression and recovery. Unfortunately, it is too easy to think that people with depression can just snap out of it.
I also agree that teen’s with depression often have no place to turn for help. I suppose I would agree that record companies do tend to pry on these individuals. Though the biggest offenders are the big drug companies like Pfizer and Eli-Lilly.
That is a very important point. Being lucid in a dream is not anymore draining on the body than normal dreams. I believe that Labarge did a study on this and found that lucid dreamers often experience an uplifting feeling that lasts for days and even weeks. ( At least from what I remember. I do not recall the exact quote )
EEEk… I wasn’t implying that it is there fault… heh… I don’t think that at all.
But comparing depression to cancer seems like a stretch. You don’t compare some one who commits homicide to some one with cancer, and clearly the person who commits murder has a serious mental illness.
On the other hand I wish that society treated criminals and drug users like they would treat the depressed. The way i see it they ended up in their position for reasons that are not that unlike the depressed person.
Why not they are booth medical conditions. I could have used any “illness” as a comparison. With any diagnosis there are symptoms and treatments for it.
Well, I agree that killing someone is an act of insanity but, not necessarily a sign of mental illness. People commit murder for a variety of reasons. Greed, jealousy and revenge just to name a few. Would it surprise you to know that people with mental illness are more likely to be the victims of crime rather than the perpetrators.
Believe it or not I wish we treated people with mental illness like we treat criminals. Criminals have rights and those rights are better protected. LOL It is not funny and I know what you mean. Incarceration has never proven to be a deferent to crime so why we lock up so many people defies my logic. Manny are driven to crime due to their circumstances and out of desperation.
On the original topic, I do think that there may be some associate between sleeping too much (hypersomnia) and your mental well being for the day. I know that I sleep way too much usually in order to have more dreams(heh) and I am ALWAYS tired. Days that I don’t sleep as much, meaning no more than 8 hours I seem to be more sleepy at times, but mentally I am more able to operate. It is easier to concentrate etc.
Another example is one of my female friends never sleeps enough… probably like 7-7.5 hours a night and she is always bubbly and hard working, but then days she sleeps over 9 hours she has a headache and is groggy all day.
Like I said though… I don’t think that this has anything to do with depression, because your sleep will only effect you the next day for each night of sleep and depression is something that lasts over long periods of time.
I guess this is just another example how everyone is different. I have never had a problem with sleeping too much. The longest I have slept was 11 hours once and I did so on purpose for lucid dreaming. I felt fine afterwards. Normally, I sleep from 7-91/2 hours which is more than enough to lucid dream. Now there were times when I only slept for 4 or 5 hours. During those times if I had just normal dreams I would wake feeling tired yet, with the same amount of sleep if I have any lucid dreams I feel good like I got adequate sleep. So I do not think that, for me, lucid dreaming has any negative effects.
I don’t know if too much REM sleep causes depression. Though I doubt it. None of those articles have adequately described how they “proved” this nor did they disclose what scientific principles they followed. Also, there are different types of clinical depression and the above articles are silent on this. So, we have no idea what type of depression they are claiming to cure.
For now, I’ll just say there is insufficient information to form an opinion on this theory.
However, ths theory that lucid dreaming is draining and should not be done every night as it may cause you to become depressed is , in my opinion, laughable.
