On a steady stream of depression medications since he was 14 and prone to self-harm that included cutting – "I loved my razor blades for a while," he said – the Wyoming teen was depressed and suicidal when he was checked into Billings Clinic's psychiatric department for a two-week stay, his second such trip in just a few months.
"I was pretty much done," said Bates, now 19. "I had given up on all of it."
Bates' turnaround was so dramatic and it piqued staff's interest so much that the psychiatric department sought and gained approval to undertake what appears to be one of the first studies on the effectiveness of the treatment, called triple chronotherapy, in teenagers.
Triple chronotherapy involves three distinct parts, beginning with 36 hours of sleep deprivation for the patient.
That is followed by advancing the patient's sleep cycle to a normal bedtime over the next three days. A typical cycle might begin with having the patient sleep from 6 p.m. to 1 a.m. on the first day, 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. and finally from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., followed by a regular 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. sleep schedule.
Finally, every morning beginning after the first night of sleep deprivation, the patient undergoes 30 minutes of light therapy at the same time each day using a specialized, but common, light box.
The box is the same type used to help patients suffering from seasonal affective disorder and, for the purposes of the clinic's work, is a 10,000-lux light.
The therapy should never be done without supervision from trained medical professionals.