Effects of Sleep (and Sleep Deprivation) on Mental Health

Now take the scenario from the last post: you’re up past 3 AM in a herculean attempt to salvage the remnants of your American History grade. Before you are aware that you have fallen asleep, your alarm screeches in your ear to remind you of your impending doom.

7:30 AM.

Your eyes flutter open, but not without a fight. You manage to swing your backpack over your shoulders, grab a bagel from the fridge, and trudge your way to the building where your exam is held.

As soon as you enter the room, you slump into place groggily and glance through each question in your exam packet. What material you crammed the previous night — or morning? — already appears hazy to you. There is no way that you are going to ace the exam at this point, let alone walk out alive.

But, lo and behold, you manage to exit your exam room an hour later, but not without pushing past your friends. Unfortunately, your ability to function in your classes doesn’t last for very long, because you are in a (cranky) slump for the entire rest of the afternoon. You snap at everyone and anyone who asks you about your day, because you lack the patience to carry out small talk. The only thing that you desire to do is crawl into your bed for a long slumber, but your day doesn’t end until 12 AM.

Had you repeated the cycle for the following day, you know you would have been a grumpy, hot mess.

Sleeping as Therapy

What exactly causes the moodiness that comes with sleep deprivation? Sleep helps to regulate our emotions and maintain our emotional stability. With an adequate amount of sleep, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) — the center of logic and rationality — maintains a strong connection to the amygdala, which is involved in the emotional processing of negative emotions. According to Walker and van Der Helm, once we deprive ourselves of sleep, the connection between the PFC and amygdala is severed, resulting in an overactive, emotional brain (2009).

REM sleep, in particular, has also been shown to play a role in emotion regulation. According to Walker’s Emotional Therapy Theory, we sleep to forget certain emotional experiences (2009).

The connection between emotional stability and sleep deprivation is not unidirectional, however. The state of our mental health can also negatively impact our ability to sleep, leading to recurrent insomnia and, in turn, an irritable mood.

Clinical Implications of Chronic Sleep Disturbance

With time comes long-term complications and the clinical implications of sleep loss are far and wide; sleep deprivation has been shown to correlate with various mental health conditions, including bipolar disorder. In fact, studies have shown that sleep disturbance plays a role in inducing the symptoms of bipolar disorder.

Bipolar disorder is a mental disorder whereby an individual shifts between manic and depressive episodes. Whereas manic episodes are characterized by a sense of euphoria and restlessness, depressive episodes may involve a profound sense of sadness or lack of pleasure. Some scientists propose that inconsistent sleeping patterns may precipitate manic or depressive episodes (Gruber et al., 2011).

Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Students

At an age where individuals undergo bumpy transitions, mental health has never been so crucial to our overall well-being. Many overworked students experience intense stress and a lack of sleep, which likely contributes to the high rate of depression on university campuses. This excessive focus on high academic achievement can in fact be counterintuitive to their goals as students experience an increase in stress and, in turn, sleep disturbance, which negatively impacts their overall performance.

As tempting as it may be to spend another late night cramming for an exam, we have seen — through our personal experiences and research — that there is little to no cognitive or mental health benefit of sleep deprivation. Not only does staying up late make us cranky and not fun to be around, we are taking a big hit to our mental well-being.

It is about time that we take action in improving our mental health but in order to do that, we must break the endless cycle of sleep deprivation that we constantly put ourselves through. But don’t take our word for it; how has a lack of sleep affected your mood?

Citations

Walker, M. P., & van Der Helm, E. (2009). Overnight therapy? The role of sleep in emotional brain processing. Psychological bulletin, 135(5), 731.

Gruber, J., Miklowitz, D. J., Harvey, A. G., Frank, E., Kupfer, D., Thase, M. E., … Ketter, T. A. (2011). Sleep matters: Sleep functioning and course of illness in bipolar disorder. Journal of Affective Disorders, 134(1–3), 416–420.