The Link between Sleep and our Mental Health

Amanda Hehr
Zennea
3 min readOct 30, 2018

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Mental health is a Pillar of Health that hasn’t traditionally been given as much attention as it needs. With a rise in awareness we are starting to see more companies adopt mental health days and more people seeking professional advice for their mental health issues. There are many reasons why this is such as important Pillar, but how does it affect our sleep and vice-versa?

How our sleep affects our mental health

Insomnia may be a cause of depression

Insomnia has been commonly known as a side effect of depression, stress, and anxiety. A new study, however, has found that reducing insomnia through Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) might also reduce these mental health problems. It has also been found that individuals with insomnia are 6 times more likely to develop major depression.

Lack of sleep makes it harder to cope with symptoms

A proper sleep with good, uninterrupted REM stages provides us with the emotional and cognitive benefits of feeling balanced and able to regulate our emotions, make good judgements, and process information properly. This means that without good sleep, we’re more prone to being irrational and making poor decisions, which can, in turn, make many mental health problems difficult to deal with.

How our mental health affects our sleep

Bipolar disorder, ADHD, PTSD, and schizophrenia all cause poor sleep

For individuals suffering from bipolar disorder, irregular sleep patterns often emerge during episodes, and even between episodes they experience lower quality of sleep. ADHD is linked to daytime sleepiness and restless leg syndrome in children. Individuals suffering from PTSD are more likely to experience nightmares, causing more waking episodes during the night and poorer quality of sleep. 30% to 80% of people with schizophrenia experience disturbed sleep, including irregular sleeping patterns and inconsistent sleep volume.

Stress and anxiety lead to sleep deprivation

If you experience any of the disorders we talked about previously, you most likely have a team helping you figure out the best ways to cope. If you experience a more common-place mental health issue such as mild anxiety or stress, however, you might not be taking the steps you need to cope with it — and it’s detrimental to your sleep, and therefore health. Anxiety and stress make it harder to fall asleep and harder to stay asleep, for many reasons, causing sleep deprivation.

It has been found that 40% of people with insomnia have a mental health condition. Conversely, people without mental illness have significantly lower rates of insomnia. Studies have shown that the link between mental health and sleep goes both ways: mental health problems often cause sleep disorders, and sleep disorders can worsen and even cause me mental health issues. We already know the effects that lack of sleep has on our physical health, so it’s important that you are managing your mental health the best that you can — not only for your mental health (which is important on its own), but for it’s detrimental effects to your physical health.

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