According to a review of 61 studies of patients suffering from severly debilitating depression, a large majority of the patients reported that missing a night's sleep immediately lifted their depression. Yet sleep-deprivation is not used to treat depression even though the convential treatments, which use drugs and electric shocks, often have serious side effects.

Which of the following if true best explains the fact that sleep deprivation is not used as a treatment for depression?

I chose C

C: Prolonged loss of sleep can lead to temporary impairment of judgment comparable to that induced by consuming several ounces of alchol.

OA E.

E. Depression returns in full force as soon as the patient sleeps for even a few minutes.

please explain what is wrong with C !!!

[quote="Anonymous"]According to a review of 61 studies of patients suffering from severely debilitating depression, a large majority of the patients reported that missing a night's sleep immediately lifted their depression. Yet sleep-deprivation is not used to treat depression even though the conventional treatments, which use drugs and electric shocks, often have serious side effects.

Which of the following if true best explains the fact that sleep deprivation is not used as a treatment for depression?

C: Prolonged loss of sleep can lead to temporary impairment of judgment comparable to that induced by consuming several ounces of alcohol.

--vs--

E. Depression returns in full force as soon as the patient sleeps for even a few minutes.

People suffer from depression. Sleep deprivation is reported to temporarily cure depression. Sleep deprivation is not used to treat depression because....
1) Sleep deprivation has more/worse side effects then drugs and/or electric shock ----or---- 2) Sleep deprivation isn't a proper treatment and doesn't work

C) This answer choice tells us that not sleeping for a while can lead to temporary impairment of judgment similar to having a few cocktails. Is this side effect worse then those of the other treatments? I don't know.

E) Depression returns in full force as soon as the patient sleeps for even a few minutes.
This answer choice leaves much less room for argument and if its true, would really explain why they don't use it. Because it doesn't work no matter how long or short the patient sleeps for.

Try to find the answer that really puts the nail in the coffin.

Listen, I picked C because if the person is unable to make a good judgement, then there is no way to tell if actually did feel better after not sleeping. I still think C is better than E. ANY OTHER OPINION?

A large majority of people suffering reported that not sleeping lifts the symptoms of depression.

They didn't sleep---->They feel better

You're saying: Not sleeping ----leads to----confusion which is the reason they reported feeling better. This is actually a good explanation as to why they said they felt better but it doesn't compare to the other answer.

I

when you do these questions, you have to be VERY LITERAL, and you have to make sure that your responses STAY AS CLOSE TO THE QUESTION / CONCLUSION AS POSSIBLE.

in this problem, there isn't really a conclusion per se. but the question, which MUST be addressed, is the following:
Which of the following if true best explains the fact that sleep deprivation is not used as a treatment for depression?

choice (c) may argue against the practice of sleep deprivation in general, but it has little, if any, direct relevance to the issue of depression. not only that, but it requires the assumption that this impairment of judgment is somehow worse than the depression thereby alleviated (because otherwise it's still a beneficial tradeoff, even considering the impaired judgment).

choice (e) is CLEARLY relevant to the issue of depression, because it says, in so many words, that our alleged depression treatment will not get rid of depression.

there's no question which of these answer choices is more relevant to the question at hand. don't think too much about 'the big picture' when the question is actually focused on 'the small picture'.

Ron - Many thanks for your explanation, just one question In CR I thought we can never contradict facts but option E

Depression returns in full force as soon as the patient sleeps for even a few minutes.

is directly contradicting the fact stated in the stimuli

a large majority of the patients reported that missing a night's sleep immediately lifted their depression

Hence I was very reluctant to choose Option E, could you please advise what's wrong in my thought process.

what did you think was a contradiction?

these statements are perfectly consistent with each other: a sleepless night keeps depression at bay, but, as soon as the person does sleep again -- whenever that might be -- the depression comes back.

Grrrr.. Sorry my bad I need to get some sleep i think! Sorry again....

Cheers
JP

it happens.