The link between sleep and mental health
~ LouLou Dove
It is common knowledge that a lack of sleep or feeling tired at the end of the day can make a person bad tempered or more emotional. The expression “Waking up on the wrong side of the bed”is a perfect example of how this is a fact pretty much universally acknowledged. But can sleep actually cure more than just a foul temper?
In 2017 there was a study done, a randomised controlled trial at 26 UK universities where university students with insomnia randomly received digital cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia or they received usual care. Online assessments took place at weeks 0,3 and 10. The measures were for insomnia, paranoia and hallucinatory experiences.
The results showed that insomnia is a causal factor of psychotic experiences and other mental health problems. Yet the traditional view is that disrupted sleep is a by product of mental disorders.
In the book why we sleep, Matthew Walker comes to the conclusion that sleep is essential for your health, it refreshes the mind and repairs the body. He also mentions that a lack of sleep can cause mood disturbances and impaired judgement. These are both symptoms of bad mental health.
On the other hand. mental disorders such as anxiety and depression are shown to aect sleep, causing a person to have dificulty falling/ staying asleep. At this point it becomes a chicken and egg problem, its unclear whether a reason for poor mental health is poor sleep or whether a reason for poor sleep is poor mental health.
However, it can easily be proved that good quality sleep is linked to good mental health. An experiment done in 2021 proved the link between mental health and sleep. It concluded that “Taken together, the present research supports the view that sleep is causally related to the experience of mental health diculties, and therefore that sleep represents a viable treatment target that can confer significant benefits to mental health.” Meaning that there is no reason to believe that sleep would be less eective when being used as a treatment for mental health conditions than it would be for physical ones.
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