Get Some Sleep!
Everyone knows it is important to get a good amount of sleep every night, but exactly how crucial is sleep? Sleep plays a critical role in keeping our emotions in check, how we deal with stressful situations, and also decreases our risk for developing mental health problems such as anxiety and depression.
A research study done in 2014 questioned whether sleep had a positive impact on lessening the degree to which a person would develop mental health problems such as depression and anxiety. The study involved two groups of participants. One group had young adult college students while the other group had young adult workers. The young adult workers were meant to portray the diversity seen in the real world. Each participant was asked to fill out a survey where they answered questions about their sleeping habits and patterns, such as how many hours of sleep they usually got every night, how many hours of sleep they wish they could get every night, if they had any diagnosed sleeping disorders, and if they experienced any day time sleepiness. There were also questions on the survey meant to record how at risk an individual was for developing depression and anxiety (Dickinson, Wolkow, Rajaratnam, & Drummond, 2018).
There was another factor that played a role in this experiment and it had to do with chronotype. If an individual prefers to be more active at night than during the day, they have an evening chronotype. This was the case for most of the participants. 43.8% of the students and 40.1% of the workers had an evening chronotype (Dickinson et al., 2018). In addition to that, the surveys revealed that the mean amount of sleep for students was 6.67 hours and for workers it was 6.75 hours. Wit the combined toll of not enough sleep and having an evening chronotype, 18.9% of the students were at a higher risk in developing depression and 23.3% of the students were at a higher risk in developing moderate to severe anxiety. For the workers, the combined toll of not enough sleep and having an evening chronotype, 26.9% of the workers were at a higher risk in developing depression and 25.5% of the workers were at a higher risk in developing moderate to severe anxiety (Dickinson et al., 2018).
What made a difference in this study was the amount of sleep participants would get every night. The risk for developing depression and anxiety among students was lowest when they got between 7.5 to 8.5 hours of sleep every night. For workers, the risk for developing depression and anxiety was lowest when they got between 7.5 to 8 hours of sleep every night (Dickinson et al., 2018). This study shows the relationship that sleep and mental status have and the difference a good amount of sleep can have on one's mental health.
In a systematic literature review from 2018, the problem being addressed was whether or not having an evening chronotype corresponds to or even contributes to mental illness. The literature review was able to provide evidence that having an evening chronotype does make an individual more at risk for developing mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, suicide, and attention issues. There are many pathways that lead to having an evening chronotype and they could be genes, daily amount of sleep, and if a person suffers from sleep disturbances such as from children or pets (Taylor & Hasler, 2018).
The literature review explains how 35 different studies show that people who preferred evening time activities, also known as evening chronotype, were more often associated with severe mood disorders such as depression and anxiety (Taylor & Hasler, 2018). Other studies mentioned also show that suicide attempts and suicide ideation are linked to evening chronotype. 9 other studies examined whether evening chronotype was associated with attention disorders such as ADHD and the research did suggest that inattentive levels increased when the individual had an evening chronotype (Taylor & Hasler, 2018).
Poor sleep quality, such as disturbances throughout the night, have also been suggestible in increased symptoms of depression as well as retaining negative emotions. That isn't even the worst of it all, the literature review mentions studies where having an evening chronotype can make an individual more susceptible to the problematic use of drugs and alcohol (Taylor & Hasler, 2018). This systematic literature review explains just how detrimental an evening chronotype can be and why it is important to make mental health a priority. It isn't enough just to get a good amount of sleep, it is also important to sleep at the right time - at night!
