What are the effects of long-term sleep deprivation?

What are the short-term and long-term effects of sleep deprivation?

• I could very easily go to an online source for information on this, but I would rather hear from those who have experienced or witnessed this first-hand. I have a friend whose husband was recently hospitalized with a serious viral infection and he has not been able to sleep for nearly 2 weeks now. To say it's taking its toll (on the whole family) is an understatement. Any info or insight you could provide will be appreciated.

• Answer:

  without wishing to scare you, if you go without sleep for long enough then you can actually die from it. short term effects are usually hallucinations, loss of concentration etc, long term is death. as long as the body gets a few hrs a day then that should be enough to ward of the worst effect although i can imagine it isnt very nice. my fella suffers the same thing, his sleep is terrible and at times has gone more than a wk without sleep of any kind. mostly due to the job he had, it still occurs now tho. i would've thought the hospital would give him something to help him sleep.