The medical term "Clinophilia": "liking to lie down"

Dolphin

Dolphin

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
I just came across a new medical term to me and thought it might be interesting to highlight it.

"The word clinophilia means "liking to lie down" (from the Greek clino- [lying down] and -philia [love]). It is one of the first symptoms of depression or schizophrenia, but is not in itself a disease. Clinophiliacs generally experience feelings of isolation and repressed sadness."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinophilia

Perhaps by searching for this term some interesting findings could show.
 
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This is the paper in which I came across it:

Objective Sleep–Wake Findings in Patients with Post-COVID-19 Syndrome, Fatigue and Excessive Daytime Sleepiness
"These findings highlight a polysomnographic and actigraphic profile of increased arousal and clinophilia, alongside moderate sleep apnea and limited objective sleepiness on MSLT."
https://www.mdpi.com/2514-183X/9/1/15
 
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Just to be explicit in what I’m thinking: I’m guessing there have been people with orthostatic intolerance where it has been psychologised with this term. Though perhaps it has a more neutral meaning in some cases and just a descriptive term.
 
Dolphin said:
Just to be explicit in what I’m thinking: I’m guessing there have been people with orthostatic intolerance where it has been psychologised with this term. Though perhaps it has a more neutral meaning in some cases and just a descriptive term.
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I briefly discussed this concept with my psychologist (phd in pain and sleep), although we never used the term. She said that the behaviour she observed (being bedbound) would only be present in severe depression. She had no reason to believe that I was depressed at all, so she concluded that I probably was severely ill. We spent the rest of the session talking about how I experienced the whole situation, and she was open about how difficult it was for her to observe me in that state.

My GP on the other hand, made a remark about how ‘he didn’t know if I had just given up’ at the start of me being bedbound. I had to get my psychologist to write him a letter explaining that my mental health was fine. In fact, it has improved since getting ME/CFS.
 
I’ve observed clinophilia/clinomania once as a part of depression in a friend. The person’s behaviour was very different from any ME/CFS- or OI-patient I’ve ever spoken to. I struggle to see how anyone could confuse them.

Edit: I’ve also observed clinophilia in PVF that eventually fully resolved.
 
Utsikt said:
I’ve observed clinophilia/clinomania once as a part of depression in a friend. The person’s behaviour was very different from any ME/CFS- or OI-patient I’ve ever spoken to. I struggle to see how anyone could confuse them.

Edit: I’ve also observed clinophilia in PVF that eventually fully resolved.
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In the second post, I highlight how the term was used in a long Covid paper.
 
Dolphin said:
In the second post, I highlight how the term was used in a long Covid paper.
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I tried to get to the bottom of their claims..

Your paper says this about clinophilia:

In addition, actigraphy showed a tendency towards high night-to-night variability, high inactivity index and relatively low inter-daily stability during the monitoring. These findings suggest clinophilia and poor sleep hygiene, which may contribute to and be affected by increased fatigue in a bidirectional relationship [54].

Our results are consistent with the reports of 65 subjects 3 months after hospitalization due to COVID-19 infection, which showed a reduced inter-daily stability of 0.59 and a mean sleep efficiency of 84.6% [55]. Clinophilia is a symptom usually associated with mood disorders [43], and in our cohort, a large percentage (78.6%) of patients reported depressive symptoms.​

54 says this about clinophilia:

Nevertheless, without this procedure [polysomnography], it is difficult to distinguish whether hypersomnia consists of actual extended sleep or whether it simply represents an extra time spent in bed without necessarily sleeping, known as clinophilia.

(…)

Taken together, there is no objective evidence supporting the view that patients with mood disorder have either abnormal mean sleep latency on the MSLT or objective extended nocturnal sleep. However, these patients spent a substantial amount of time in bed, acknowledged as ‘resting’ more than ‘sleeping’ (called clinophilia), with major distress and impacts on the natural course of mood disorders.
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I can’t find any support for the first paper’s claims that clinophilia contributes to increased fatigue. The other way around would be plausible, although there’s no support for this in the sections that directly mention clinophilia.

Before the second paragraph, they mention a study with reference 57.

57 in 54 is paywalled, but it tries to distinguish primary and psychiatric hypersomnia (excessive sleepiness):

The aim of this study was to assess whether polysomnography aids in the differential diagnosis of these two disorders.

Our findings indicate that psychiatric hypersomnia is a disorder of hyperarousal, whereas primary hypersomnia is a disorder of hypoarousal.
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Based on the abstract, there is nothing in the design or conclusion of 57 that makes it suitable to determine if clinophilia causes ‘major distress and impacts on the natural course of mood disorders’.

54 (in the first paper) also mentions some other studies on bipolar depression and major depressive disorder, but I’m not sure they are relevant.

43 in the first paper is paywalled, but the claim that clinophilia is usually associated with mood disorders is imprecise at best. My guess is that clinophilia is associated with any severe illness, as sick people tend to want to rest more than healthy people. The reason that clinophilia doesn’t show up in biomedical research is that they don’t have a freudian fetish.

In summary, it seems like your original paper has taken some creative liberties..
 
Dolphin said:
I just came across a new medical term to me and thought it might be interesting to highlight it.

"The word clinophilia means "liking to lie down" (from the Greek clino- [lying down] and -philia [love]). It is one of the first symptoms of depression or schizophrenia, but is not in itself a disease. Clinophiliacs generally experience feelings of isolation and repressed sadness."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinophilia

Perhaps by searching for this term some interesting findings could show.
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hmm … rather suspicious of this term being invented to be used inaccurately for those ‘needing to lie down’

just like we see eg anorexia being used even when catacexia is appropriate or just weight loss. Or exercise intolerance getting used in laypersons terms as interchangeable with being unfit in the old school sense of just needing to get yourself back to fitness before eg netball season begins.

Are there many ‘philia’ that really are appropriate medically ?

after all they don’t really mean ‘liking to’ but ‘an obsession with’ really when they use that term ‘philia’ in a medical context normally?

there does seem to be an issue either those inventing them are somehow blind to or they have an agenda and are fully aware of in that the medical profession often misused such terms. The common way being to take something with a specific meaning and imply it can be more generic/Broad when slapping it in as a label, yet once it’s on then said labels extra specificity supersedes truth/reality that was waived away as ‘of course people will be aware we don’t mean that/will note that nuance fir you isn’t quite right’ at the point of imposition
 
Utsikt said:
I’ve observed clinophilia/clinomania once as a part of depression in a friend. The person’s behaviour was very different from any ME/CFS- or OI-patient I’ve ever spoken to. I struggle to see how anyone could confuse them.

Edit: I’ve also observed clinophilia in PVF that eventually fully resolved.
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This is a very good pint that has been on my mind recently (but not set up any thread on as I think it imbues a lot of certain ‘professionsls’’ assumptions)

I saw a short reel of a red talk of someone talking about their depression and he used the term ‘it isn’t sadness, it is a lack of vitality’ and then clarified that as the vim (rather than vigour) to get out of bed and go enjoy x at the weekend or whatever.

I have a friend who has depression and a while back we had a few very interesting conversations on comparing me/cfs with her situation. She suggested it was ‘can’t get out of bed , move etc’ fir her in a way that isn’t explained by her legs not working etc but more than a ‘can’t face the day’ but an ‘I really can’t do this’ sense - I’m almost certainly not doing her words justice.

but the comparator eg with PEM, where we are at our most disabled, is that probably whilst before I feel a bit more well and would be dreaming of what I’d love to do I’m genuinely stuck in bed feeling awful and am telling people I can’t (these days ahead of time thankfully) I’m normally quite quickly trying to plan my path out of that straight jacket and within limitations what I’ll use my bit of energy on next eg food or loo. Rather than thinking ‘oh god I don’t care’. If it is for that short time neither of those due to feeling too awful then that decision is made on resting at that point in order to improve chances of doing it eg in a few hours , rather than hoping that need will just go away.

at that point it is that my body is needing to lie down and the relief of eg getting neck supported right is hard to describe . But then what I’m actually’wanting to do’ often involves not being stuck flat on my back eg being able to type on my phone or laptop involving a different angle. And if I try and do that ‘too early’ I end up having to roll out if it to the sude feeling horrific if I’ve pushed too far and it sets me back for longer.

I’m trying to imagine what if someone had a camera on me different people and personality types would see or assume from watching this over those days vs eg someone with clinical depression

I do imagine if you added in the coercive environment forcing people to do certain things or endure noise and were observing those in PEM vs depression then maybe at that point ie the reaction to that might be presumed by a small number as ‘similar’ only in a very crude sense of ‘not reacting well to it’ simply because both of our only options are few: communication with offender, action to try and close door or make it go away, reaction to the pain of situation, summoning adrenaline to go elsewhere that is safer (? Does this happen with depression in this circumstance I assume?)

but the impact on those two illnesses beyond that ‘immediate’ I’m guessing is quite different because it is devastating for a pwme to be out through that as it extends the PEM (vs if they hadn’t been treated inconsiderately and been allowed to rest it off undisturbed)


I don’t know what the impact of that is for those with clinical depression

but as seems to be a real issue these days of those with non clinical things pathologising and assuming themselves heroic for overcoming normal things like ‘being tired after a long week’ I suspect we suffer from eg therapists who think they’ve ’personal experience’ to bring to bear from when they conquered ‘not feeling like getting out of bed last Monday’ or ‘thought they were too tired to get up and go on that trip but ended up enjoying it once they got going and had had a few coffees’


The last thing we need is the snide/callous ‘lying in bed all day does you no good’ gang being given a new weapon of misrepresentation and slander

by being allowed to infer it’s a ‘philia’ to further represent us as weirdos in order to cover up and permit bigotry snd callousness - the ‘but they deserve it’ propaganda
 
In the context of autism, the medical term for sound sensitivity is hyeracusis. It's also sometimes referred to as auditory hypersensitivity or decreased sound tolerance.

I'm not autistic but I do read many posts on social media that describe what I experience, including sensory overload and needing to 'log off'
 
Reminds me when my GP said I have Polymania (a little used french word for a theorised psychological disorder where one has excessive thirst).

I think in english it’s called psychogenic polydipsia.

(I’m clearly very ill with a physical illness that is very poorly understood and my thirst levels fluctuate exactly alongside it so it baffles me my caregivers and GP would assume it’s psychogenic)
 
Mij said:
In the context of autism, the medical term for sound sensitivity is hyeracusis. It's also sometimes referred to as auditory hypersensitivity or decreased sound tolerance.

I'm not autistic but I do read many posts on social media that describe what I experience, including sensory overload and needing to 'log off'
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Is the mechanism behind this known?
 
Yann04 said:
In fact, digging into the wikipedia, it seems they classify anything they don’t know how to treat biomedically as psychogenic.
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That’s so backwards, and quite ironic. They talk about how we should get away from the dualism of body vs mind (which is a strawman argument), yet their entire theory is based on the dualism of biomedical vs psychogenic, etc. If it isn’t biomedical in the sense that we can observe the exact cause, it has to be psychogenic.

Except that they’ve moved on from their roots, and now claim to know how to fix almost anything.
 
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