ABSTRACT
Sleep complaints have been described in patients suffering with mood disorders from the times of antiquity. The noted Greek physician and ethicist Hippocrates1
described severe clinical depression (referred to as melancholia, i.e. ‘black bile’) as a state of ‘aversion to food, despondency, sleeplessness, irritability and restlessness’, a description that would conform closely to current DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edn) criteria for a diagnosis of major depressive disorder (MDD), including prominent sleep disturbance.
