Thursday, August 30, 2012

Sleep-Related Eating Disorder May Be Form of Sleepwalking


French researchers say patients with sleep-related eating disorder (SRED) have several features in common with their non-eating-disordered people who sleepwalk. They studied 15 patients with SRED, 21 sleepwalkers, and 20 age- and sex-matched healthy volunteers, and reported their results online in Sleep Medicine

All participants underwent interviews; completed sleep, anxiety, depression, and eating behavior scales; and had a nighttime videopolysomnography. Patients with SRED were mainly women, had disease onset in adulthood, suffered nightly episodes and insomnia, and had more frequent eating problems in childhood and higher current anorexia scores than did the sleepwalkers and controls. Unlike controls, they shared several commonalities with the sleepwalkers, including high frequency of past or current sleepwalking, a similar timing of parasomnia episodes during the first half of the night, and a similarly altered level of daytime sleepiness and anxiety. They differed from the sleepwalkers in that they had a higher level of awareness during parasomnia episodes.

A clinician's response to an eating-disordered patient can affect treatment outcomes. Read more about the issue in Psychiatric News, here.

(Image: Rob Byron/Shutterstock.com)

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