ANON POST: psychological effects of sleep deprivation as child abuse

[kutsuwamushi]

I'm writing about the more long term effects of a now-adult child abuse victim who suffered severe sleep deprivation an average of two to three times a week roughly between the ages of eight and twelve - kept awake an average of twenty-something hours and then allowed sleep only when it was disrupted by noise and light in the room where he slept,

Comments

[emilyelle]

Children, especially babies and toddlers, do most of their information synthesizing and learning while they sleep. This is why they sleep so much, and develop so rapidly. I'm just a psych undergrad, but i would expect severe learning disabilites and otherwise impaired cognitive function (e.g. delayed language, etc.) to result from this.

Good luck!

[emilyelle]

I should clarify--adults synthesize information as they sleep too, but young children absolutely depend on it to develop as quickly as they do. I might expect stunted growth as well. And emotional problems (severe anxiety, irritableness, depression, behavioural issues)

[sidheag]

I'm not sure what you mean by "not to the extent that it reached a state of semi-starvation" but I'm not sure it's plausible that there's long-term growth stunting without serious under/malnutrition. You might want to look up long-term effects of anorexia: often there aren't any, despite very low calorie intake at this kind of age. (Growth will stop while undernutrition continues, but can resume later.) Maybe you can do something with the mal- part.

[zeecoldwater]

Rickets is the most likely thing that comes to mind, really.

[hyarrowen]

"The Promise of Sleep" by Dement is a good lay person's text on the subject. Anecdotally, a friend's daughter suffered from sleep disorders during her teen years, and once after a fortnight's poor sleep, she slept the whole night through. My friend said she got visibly taller overnight. It's only during Stage 4 sleep that human growth hormone is released.
Sleep deprivation is really, really horrible. *knows from experience*

[darkestnova]

I suffered pretty severe sleep deprivation when I was eighteen, though not as a result of abuse. For about six months I was sleeping one hour a day and all day Sunday, and then for another three months or so I got three or four hours a night, which felt like a big step up. After the first six weeks, I'd guess, I was able to fall asleep anywhere, at any time, with no effort on my part beyond thinking to myself, "Now I can sleep." I'd also drop into REM pretty quickly.

Six years later, I can still drop off very quickly, even if I've just consumed an entire pot of coffee. (This will wake me up later though, when I need to pee. It used to be that not even that would wake me, and I'd just dream about a progressively more painful need to find a bathroom for an hour or two until something external woke me.) I also still fall into REM fairly quickly, although I'm no longer aware that I'm dreaming before I've fallen asleep. I tend to have long and vivid dreams from which I often wake up screaming or crying, which never happened before