Sleep deprivation is generally an undesirable state that can cause various problems. But it seems that it might also have some uses as well.

Sleep is known to have a role to play in the "laying down" of new memories and lack of sleep can result in less effective memory formation. That's normally a bad thing - but what when the memories are something we want to forget? Memories, for example, of a traumatic experience. Could controlled sleep deprivation actually help in reducing the long term effects of fear memories and reduce the symptoms of anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)?

New research published in the journal Biological Psychiatry suggests it could. The paper, Sleep Deprivation Facilitates Extinction of Implicit Fear Generalization and Physiological Response to Fear, reports on research with healthy young volunteers. The volunteers were exposed to unpleasant road traffic accident film. Then over a ten day period half were allowed to sleep normally and half subjected to sleep deprivation. After three days the sleep deprived group showed a lower level of negative response to the initial exposure:

...in the sleep-deprived group, generalization of implicit fear recognition for nonaversive stimuli on Day 3 and all physiological and generalized fear responses on Days 3 and 10 were comprehensively extinguished

The paper concludes:

Clinically, trauma-exposed victims often experience acute insomnia, indicating that such insomnia might provide prophylactic benefits in reducing the development of posttraumatic stress disorder via extinction of the fear-magnifying effects of memory