According to a review of 61 studies of patients suffering from severely debilitating depression, a large majority of the patients...
GMAT Critical Reasoning : (CR) Questions
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?
Passage Analysis:
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
| 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. |
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| 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. |
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Argument Flow:
"The passage presents a medical puzzle in two parts. First, it shows research evidence that sleep deprivation helps depression. Then it points out that despite this evidence and the problems with current treatments, doctors still don't use sleep deprivation as a treatment."
Main Conclusion:
"There's a puzzling gap between promising research on sleep deprivation for depression and actual medical practice."
Logical Structure:
"This isn't a traditional argument with premises leading to a conclusion. Instead, it's setting up a paradox that needs explanation: If sleep deprivation works and current treatments have bad side effects, why don't doctors use sleep deprivation? The passage presents contrasting facts to highlight this mystery."
Prethinking:
Question type:
Paradox - We need to explain why sleep deprivation isn't used as a depression treatment despite showing immediate positive effects and having fewer side effects than current treatments
Precision of Claims
The passage makes specific claims: 61 studies showed a large majority of severely depressed patients felt immediate relief from missing one night's sleep, yet doctors don't use this method even though conventional treatments (drugs/electric shocks) have serious side effects
Strategy
For paradox questions, we need to find information that resolves the apparent contradiction. Here, we need to explain why doctors would avoid using sleep deprivation despite its apparent benefits. We should look for hidden downsides, practical limitations, or reasons why the immediate positive effects might not make it a viable long-term treatment option
This choice mentions that a small percentage of patients experience euphoria from sleep deprivation. However, this doesn't explain why sleep deprivation isn't used as treatment. If anything, temporary euphoria for some patients might be seen as a positive side effect. This doesn't address why doctors avoid using a treatment that helps the majority of severely depressed patients.
The difficulty of keeping depressed patients awake compared to non-depressed people doesn't fully explain why sleep deprivation isn't used as treatment. While this might present a practical challenge, medical treatments often require patient cooperation and monitoring. Doctors regularly use challenging treatments when the benefits outweigh the difficulties, so this alone wouldn't prevent adoption of an effective treatment.
The comparison to alcohol-induced impairment from prolonged sleep loss doesn't resolve our paradox. The passage specifically mentions that missing 'a night's sleep' provides immediate relief, and current treatments already have 'serious side effects.' Temporary judgment impairment wouldn't necessarily be worse than the serious side effects of drugs and electric shocks that are currently used.
The fact that mood shifts haven't been traced to specific brain chemistry changes doesn't explain why sleep deprivation isn't used clinically. Many effective medical treatments were used before their mechanisms were fully understood. If the treatment works immediately for most patients, the lack of understanding about brain chemistry wouldn't prevent its clinical adoption.
This perfectly explains the paradox. If depression returns 'in full force as soon as the patient sleeps for even a few minutes,' then sleep deprivation provides only extremely temporary relief. No medical treatment can require patients to never sleep again - this would be impossible and dangerous. The immediate benefits become meaningless if they disappear the moment a patient gets any rest, making this approach completely impractical for sustained treatment of depression.