by Christine G.

Created on: January 04, 2008

Sleep Deprivation: the Hidden Mental Health Risk

So, you don't get enough sleep. No big deal, right? You're young and healthy, energy drinks are readily available, and you have a full life to live. You can catch up later.

Wrong. Sleep debts are just as devastating as financial ones. Inadequate rest impairs our ability to think, to handle stress, to maintain a healthy immune system, and to manage our emotions. The higher incidence of accidents during night shift is well documented. Sleepiness can impair a driver just as much as alcohol.

We are all familiar with the post-hibernation grouchiness exhibited by someone getting up after a bad night. Most of us have had the experience of waking up late with no recollection of hearing the alarm or shutting it off. Sleep-deprived people often feel isolated from the world and resentful of the wide-awake.

Chronic sleep loss has been linked to diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, premature aging, and weight gain. Worst of all, it can produce symptoms which suggest mental illness.

Lack of restorative sleep can lead to a diagnosis of depression, and some anti-depressants can interfere with sleeping patterns. You don't want to go there. Trying to catch up on the sleep debt by sleep marathons fosters depression as well. Sleep deprivation is sometimes used as a treatment for unipolar depression, which would take you full circle.

Sleep deprivation information was confined to folklore until Dr. William Dement established a sleep laboratory at Stanford University in 1957, followed by the world's first sleep disorders clinic in 1970. He was the first to use the term REM (rapid eye-movement) sleep, and linked psychotic behavior with sleep deprivation.

Since then, improved research techniques have established that sleep is an incredibly complex process, involving the endocrine system as well as the neural net.
Neurons in our brainstem produce nerve-signaling neurotransmitters such as serotonin and norepinephrine, which control alertness and mood. Other neurons at the base of the brain switch off the signals that keep us awake. This may be the effect of adenosine, which builds up in our blood while we are awake, causing drowsiness, and gradually breaks down while we are asleep.

The production of the stress hormone cortisol is inhibited during sleep. Lack of sleep will lead to a build-up which affects our waking behavior and physiology by keeping us in unnecessarily prepared for fight or flight. Sleep is one of the factors regulating

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>