| Abstract: | Affective disorder has often been associated with disturbances of circadian rhythmicity. The present study addressed the question of the specificity of this relationship. Two groups of subjects, a “depression-prone” and a control group, were selected on the basis of their scores on two widely-used depression questionnaires. For a period of 4 consecutive weeks circadian rhythmicity was recorded by means of log-booklets, which the subjects used to keep daily records of their hours of sleep, subjective sleep quality, and subjective alertness, mood and oral temperature. The results showed significantly lower values of subjective sleep quality and estimated sleep efficiency for the “depression-prone” group. Moreover, for the latter group nonparametric spectral analysis revealed a significantly weaker circadian rhythmicity of subjective alertness, mood, as well as oral temperature. It was concluded that these results argue against the specificity of the amplitude reduction, as often reported to be the most consistent circadian abnormality in affective disorder. |
