How are you feeling today? If you’re anything like me and my friends the answer might well be ‘tired’. In modern society it can seem as though everyone is trying to cram as much as possible into their day, with work, family commitments, studying, exercising and fitting in a social life. This coupled with increased smart phone use (hands up if you scroll through Instagram before you go to sleep..), especially in the evenings can lead to people just not getting as much sleep as they should be.
Sleep deprivation is defined as having less that 7-8 hours of sleep a night for adults (Colten, & Altevogt, 2006). However, a recent survey in the UK found that 70% of adults say they sleep for less than 7 hours each night and over 25% said they regularly slept badly (Sleepcouncil.org.uk).
In today’s society it appears to be normal to be sleep deprived. What effect is this having on our mental health?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, sleep deprivation has been shown to impair our ability to focus. Studies which have examined the effects of sleep deprivation on driving and found participant’s ability to stay in lane was as impaired as a group who were over the legal alcohol limit (Fairclough & Graham, 1999).
Another study looked at the effects of sleep deprivation in students and found that those who had gone without a night of sleep performed significantly worse at a cognitive task than those who had 8 hours sleep the night before (Pilcher & Walters, 1997). Interestingly, the sleep deprived participants in this study rated their performance on the task as higher than those who weren’t sleep deprived! This suggests that when we’ve not slept enough we might not always realise the effect it can have on our performance the next day.
As well as affecting your ability to focus, sleep deprivation has the largest effect on mood (Pilcher & Huffcott, 1996). One study asked participants to go without two nights of sleep, and compared scores on a personality trait questionnaire at baseline and again after they had been awake for 56 hours. When they were sleep deprived, participants showed higher scores of anxiety, depression and paranoia (Khan-Greene et al 2007). Another study has shown than just losing one night’s sleep can increase anxiety scores (Sagaspe et al, 2006). These research suggests that going without sleep can affect the parts of your brain involved in mood regulation such as parts of the prefrontal cortex.
For tips on how to improve your sleep – the full report by the Sleep Council has some useful tips (and more surprising stats) here: https://www.sleepcouncil.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/The-Great-British-Bedtime-Report.pdf
References:
Colten, HR.; Altevogt, BM. Sleep disorders and sleep deprivation: An unmet public health problem. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press: Institute of Medicine; 2006.
Fairclough, S.H. and Graham, R., 1999. Impairment of driving performance caused by sleep deprivation or alcohol: a comparative study. Human Factors, 41(1), pp.118-128.
Kahn-Greene, E.T., Killgore, D.B., Kamimori, G.H., Balkin, T.J. and Killgore, W.D., 2007. The effects of sleep deprivation on symptoms of psychopathology in healthy adults. Sleep medicine, 8(3), pp.215-221.
Pilcher, J.J. and Huffcutt, A.I., 1996. Effects of sleep deprivation on performance: a meta-analysis. Sleep, 19(4), pp.318-326.
Pilcher, J.J. and Walters, A.S., 1997. How sleep deprivation affects psychological variables related to college students’ cognitive performance. Journal of American College Health, 46(3), pp.121-126.
Sagaspe, P., Sanchez-Ortuno, M., Charles, A., Taillard, J., Valtat, C., Bioulac, B. and Philip, P., 2006. Effects of sleep deprivation on Color-Word, Emotional, and Specific Stroop interference and on self-reported anxiety. Brain and cognition, 60(1), pp.76-87.