Sleep sounds like a normal activity for some, but it is as important as eating food and exercising. Taking a good night’s sleep for granted can have negative effects in the long term. Many people these days are taking this concept of sleep lightly and disrupting their routines for short-term pleasures like binge-watching TV series or scrolling through social media at night. Doing these things for a long period of time negatively affects the physical and mental health of these individuals. In this post, we will discuss the connection between sleep and mental health, and how one affects the other.
Why sleep matters for mental health:
Sleep is an activity that is not just for resting and relaxing. It is an essential process of our body that is dedicated to providing our cells with much-needed healing and rejuvenation. Without a good night’s sleep, our body and brain miss out on proper flushing out of toxins from the brain, solidification of important memories, and strengthening the immune system and bodily tissues.
Sleeping may be a passive activity for us, but for our body, it is a very active process. Sleep transitions from one stage to another to provide our body and brain with restoration and repair.
When someone does not get enough sleep, he/she starts to feel many health issues including physical and mental.
So, sleep is a process that is for the maintenance of the body and the mind. People who lack good sleep start to show signs of mental health issues such as depression, fogginess, irritability, and so on. It is also observed that the vice versa to this is also true. This means people having mental health issues often suffer from poor sleep. That is why it is important that we take our sleep schedule seriously and better manage and improve our mental health.
How to know if you are sleep-deprived?
Have you ever heard of the “spoon test” for sleep deprivation? It is a test that you can do on your own to find out how sleep-deprived you are. In this test, you need to have a metal spoon, a metal plate/tray, and a watch. To carry out this test you need to lie down on the edge of your bed during the daytime while holding the spoon. Now you need to close your eyes, relax yourself, and try to sleep. Note that your room should be dark during this procedure. Now as you fall asleep you will loosen your grip on the spoon and eventually, it will drop. When it drops, stop the timer and see how much time it took you to fall asleep.
If it took five minutes or less, then it shows that you are severely sleep-deprived. you should get serious and get adequate rest and sleep. If you took ten minutes to fall asleep, then you should try to sleep more than you are sleeping now. And it took fifteen or more minutes then you are getting adequate sleep.
This test is a very good test that we all can do by ourselves and find out how good or poor our sleep is.
Some signs of a poor sleep schedule:
1. Sleeping too much:
As much as less sleeping is harmful, sleeping too much is also problematic. Sleeping a lot makes your body not work properly as you are not eating on time, exercising, or doing those important activities. This leads to feeling bad about yourself and a loop is created where you just don’t want to get out of bed and mental issues start to arise. So, make sure you are getting balanced sleep.
2. You find it hard to get up in the morning:
If you feel tired in the morning and it gets difficult for you to get out of bed, then it shows that you are not getting enough sleep/quality sleep. There could be many reasons for this such as sleeping late at night, watching movies and TV series during night time for long hours, scrolling through social media, etc.
3. You wake up in the middle of the night:
If you wake up in the middle of your sleep due to anxiety, nightmares, psychosis, etc. then you don’t get good sleep. It means you are not getting the benefits of the deeper stages of sleep( REM sleep) and that leads to poor restoration and repair of the brain and body.
What symptoms you will see if you are getting poor sleep?
1. Feeling Irritable during the day:
When you are sleep-deprived, you feel irritated all the time, You feel like you don’t have the energy or patience to deal with even the smallest of problems.
2. You struggle to do tasks:
When having poor sleep, you find it hard to perform tasks that need concentration. Tasks such as making a decision, planning something, etc.
3. Your social life getting bad:
If you don’t get enough sleep, you find it hard to socialize with family and friends. This in turn makes you feel lonely and isolated.
4. You are anxious and depressed:
When get poor sleep for a longer period, you start to feel anxiousness, depression, panic attacks, etc. Your perception of reality starts to get foggy and you develop many mental health issues, not to mention physical health issues as well.
Impact of Sleep on Mental Health:
1. Depression and Anxiety:
Lack of sleep contributes to increasing the stress hormones in the body. Hormones like cortisol increase in the bodily systems and make one feel stressed and anxious all the time. And someone who is in this state for longer periods of time develops depression as a result. This makes it difficult for these people to manage their emotions and they start to sleep even poor to cope with these issues.
2. Cognitive Function and Memory:
When we go to sleep our brain starts its process to solidify and store our memories from the day. This makes us more aware and concentrated the next day. But if we lack sleep we lose our concentration power, attention, and memory recall. These activities are very important for leading our day-to-day life and if it gets disrupted we get frustrated and highly stressed.
3. Mood Regulation:
When we are sleep-deprived, it gets very difficult to manage our emotions. We get a lot of mood swings, we feel irritable throughout the day, and find it difficult to do our daily activities.
Tips to Improve Sleep:
1. Maintain a consistent sleep schedule.
2. Make your room dark at night.
3. Don’t eat anything heavy near your bedtime.
4. Don’t drink coffee or tea after 4 pm.
5. Exercise regularly.
FAQs
REM or Rapid Eye Movement sleep is a stage of sleep that occurs after about 90 minutes of sleep. It is the stage that is important for memory building.
Yes, sleep can affect mental health, and mental health issues can affect sleep.
It depends from person to person, but everyone should get at least 7-9 hours of sleep.
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