[Sleep disorders and psychiatry. Keys for trans-nosological symptomatology, genetic epidemiology and dynamic...

Sleep studies in psychiatry collect various disorders in the category of "dysomnia", and sleep EEG studies today can be routinely performed using appropriate autonomous devices. Three major needs emerge from a broad approach of the topic: a transnosological view on symptomatology--dysomnia gets its meaning from the context, a genetic epidemiology--dysomnia appears as a risk factor for psychiatric disorders and a marker of depressive vulnerability, and as a dynamic pathogeny. A wide consensus arises in the field of polysomnographic studies claiming a clear distinction between two opposite sleep EEG basic disturbances: the non specific increase of wake during the sleep process, seen in anxiety disorders, primary insomnia and several activation situations and related to a sleep-wake instability, and the specific endogenous pattern seen in depression which suggests a super-sleep syndrome. Sleep EEG studies can provide additional information on the biological basis of the disorders, both as diagnostic criteria extension and as therapeutic intervention aid.