Can CPAP cause depression/anxiety?

davecpap wrote: I had my follow up with the sleep doc today. He was VERY surprised to find out that I wasn't doing cartwheels yet after 2 weeks on CPAP. I told him that I'd read online that it can take weeks or months to start feeling better, and he said that wasn't his experience. He wanted to start me on provigil, which I'm very anxious about. I've made an appointment with another sleep doc to get a second opinion.

My sleep doc, a pulmonologist, warned me that it can take your mind up to a month to just accept that you won't die with that thing on your face. He was pleasantly surprised to find that I loved the thing and was doing super well with it. Actually cpap has a non acceptance rate that is around 50% so I don't know what kind of experience your sleep doc has.

I did fine for the first 2 weeks and then I started waking up with "OMG I can't breathe!!!!" feelings - at which point I would lift my mask momentarily and tell my self to suck it up and go back to sleep - (after my experience of snorkeling where I at the same time felt I was going to "fall off the top of the water" and claustrophobia due to the mask I don't accept the validity of my mind screaming like that but we won't discuss my anxiety about finding a new job shall we?) These feeling wore off in about 2 weeks too.

Hi this the first time I have sent a message in the Forum. What I am intersted in is the comment being depressed/anxiety. I hired a cpap for 2 months & I will be buying one on Monday. I was very good for the first month, then I become more anxious also more crankier for some reason. I must admit I was depressed when a friend poured all her problems on me also now I have a cold. Do you think it wascaused by both of them. I have been using my cpap for the last few days with my coughing but I am miss using it. Thanks Pattom93

Pattom93 wrote:Hi this the first time I have sent a message in the Forum. What I am intersted in is the comment being depressed/anxiety. I hired a cpap for 2 months & I will be buying one on Monday. I was very good for the first month, then I become more anxious also more crankier for some reason. I must admit I was depressed when a friend poured all her problems on me also now I have a cold. Do you think it wascaused by both of them. I have been using my cpap for the last few days with my coughing but I am miss using it. Thanks Pattom93

I use a Quatro when I have a cold and really crank up the humidity. By using cough meds at night I find it much much easier to survive colds with my cpap. I was tempted to wear it during the day when I had flu/pneumonia in February but I wear glasses and the quatro didn't allow that.

Make sure you buy a data capable machine so you can see if there are any apneas that is causing the crankiness

Hi everyone,
Thanks so much for this discussion.
I am new here, and struggling with adjusting to sleeping with a CPAP, experiencing a significant increase in depressive symptoms. It is the polar opposite of the experience I was expecting! I am going to hang in there, of course, as it has only been a week - I'm not even sleeping through the night yet.
Anyhow, thanks again for sharing your experiences, thoughts and encouragement.
Laura

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Thanks so much for the reply & link. Really appreciate it.
I'm actually a licensed therapist, so am pretty "up" on depression. But I still really appreciate your response.
Just trying to figure out why mine has escalated of late. It's something I've lived with for several decades, so it's not new to me. But I just expected the CPAP treatment to lessen it. And perhaps it will, with time. Too soon to tell, for sure.
Thanks again,
Laura

I have been using a CPAP for three years and I do believe it is very possible to become depressed or at least bummed out that you have to be tethered to a machine while sleeping for the rest of your life. Of course you berate yourself for whatever is going on in your body that caused this in the first place be that facial shape or advancing age--anything is possible. I also wonder how it impacts romance. If you ask the CPAP companies they tell you things that seem to be glossing over the issues. One major thing to me that bothers me is traveling. I have not yet tried to fly with the machine but even auto trips are a problem as you have to haul distilled water to use in the humidifier and then you need special water to clean the mask parts. I have contact the maker but get the same thing that all of this is part of the process. So, why wouldn't you get bummed about about the whole situation? Makes sense to me.

You misunderstood - people have been diagnosed with depression when in fact they had undiagnosed apnea, because they were always tired and half in a fog, NOT because they have to be on Cpap! We love our machines because they've returned us to the land of the living.

And you certainly don't need special water to wash the mask and can use tap water instead of distilled in the machine when you travel, plus very many places carry distilled in any case.

Many of us travel all over the world with Cpaps and if you prepare properly, should have no trouble at all.

I think I'd get bummed if I or a relative died from sleep apnea, not because using Cpap was a hassle.

If someone tried to take away my CPAP, I guarantee one violent frog!

chunkyfrog wrote:If someone tried to take away my CPAP, I guarantee one violent frog!

And they will be buried in a depression, unless the ground is too hard. Jim

I was surprised after I got on cpap because instead of suddenly feeling well rested, I was super sleepy and slept long hours. A few people told me to hang in there and it would pass and they were right. It was like once my body realized it was safe to sleep, it wanted to make up for lost time. Seems like it was about a month like that and then I got energetic and for the first time I could exercise and recover and I had energy.

CM25 wrote:I have been using a CPAP for three years and I do believe it is very possible to become depressed or at least bummed out that you have to be tethered to a machine while sleeping for the rest of your life. Of course you berate yourself for whatever is going on in your body that caused this in the first place be that facial shape or advancing age--anything is possible. I also wonder how it impacts romance. If you ask the CPAP companies they tell you things that seem to be glossing over the issues. One major thing to me that bothers me is traveling. I have not yet tried to fly with the machine but even auto trips are a problem as you have to haul distilled water to use in the humidifier and then you need special water to clean the mask parts. I have contact the maker but get the same thing that all of this is part of the process. So, why wouldn't you get bummed about about the whole situation? Makes sense to me.

Garbage!

You POOOOOOR thing........ Suck it up! You ain't got nothing to complain about.

Here's a quote (attributed to Helen Keller where I found it) for you to ponder........

“I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet” ― Helen Keller


Den

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Den:
Plus a million.
Self pity only makes you feel even worse,
and really alienates everyone who has it worse than you!
Which is easily half the planet. Yep.

The CPAP, the therapy that uses CPAP cannot "cause" depression or anxiety, but the patient's acceptance of the diagnosis and therapy can impact their emotional health. It isn't easy for everyone to accept. Not everyone has OSA. Some of us have congestive heart failure and are dealing with more than just a snoring problem or a leaky hose. It can be overwhelming to juggle medicines, fluid retention, finding good distilled water and still not sleeping through the night.

While this FORUM is mostly about the CPAP machines, masks, heated hoses, leaks, software and the mechanics of therapy it is the whole patient that requires the machine for therapy. People are more important than the machines and deserve respect.

[@ChunkyFrog and @Wulfman... while you two have some pretty strong, dismissive opinions when it comes to depression and anxiety. I don't think those kind of comments are helpful or relevant to healthy living or using a CPAP effectively. I understand you don't have depression or anxiety issues, which might mean you don't really have a reason to comment on them to others that do. - Kind regards, Getting Better]

chunkyfrog wrote:Den:
Plus a million.
Self pity only makes you feel even worse,
and really alienates everyone who has it worse than you!
Which is easily half the planet. Yep.

Have you ever considered that one reason why the depression rates are so high is we don't allow people to experience "unacceptable" emotions and that maybe encouraging this would shorten the duration and enable people to get into problem solving mode?

No matter how minor or severe a problem someone has, there will always be someone who has it worse. But it doesn't mean that issue isn't legitimate.

49er