We all know how it feels after a bad night’s sleep. We’re tired and irritable, we struggle to concentrate and often feel low in mood. But can poor sleep have a longer-term effect on your mental health?
What is the relationship between mental health and sleep?
It is well-established that mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety can cause poor sleep. Anxiety conditions that cause late-night worry, or thoughts that chase themselves around in your head can make it very difficult to fall asleep. If you wake in the night, ruminating over thoughts can make it challenging to get back to sleep again. Depression is frequently associated with early morning waking.
What has become more clear over recent years is that there isn’t just a one-way relationship of mental health conditions affecting sleep. Poor sleep itself can be a cause of mental health conditions.
What is the bi-directional relationship between sleep and mental health?
Mental health conditions are more common if you have a sleep disorder. A significant number of recent scientific studies have made this link. One study, which was actually a study of 21 other studies, found that non-depressed people with insomnia had double the risk of developing depression as people without insomnia.
It is a similar situation with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), which is a condition where your airway repeatedly closes when you sleep. One study found that rates of depression among people with OSA can be as common as 18%, and among people with depression, the rate of OSA is 17%.
When poor sleep and mental health conditions feed into each other in a cause-and-effect way, there is the risk of setting up a vicious cycle of escalating symptoms. Ideally, both sleep and mental health should be addressed at the same time.
Links with sleep and mental health
How does poor sleep affect mental health?
While it is clear that poor sleep can cause mental health conditions, the mechanism by which this takes place is less well understood.
One suggested theory regards the role of the REM phase of sleep. Sleep is broadly divided into two phases – rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM). Each phase has different functions. REM is thought to be responsible for strengthening your emotional regulation during the day. If your REM is reduced, as is the case with insomnia and particularly OSA, you may have trouble regulating your emotions, which may lead to mental health issues.
What are the mental health benefits of better sleep?
Whatever the exact process by which sleep affects your mental health, the key point is that improving your sleep is a way to treat your mental health conditions, as well as a way to protect yourself from developing such conditions at all.
We have advice on improving your sleep in our sleep hygiene article. Insomnia can be treated with cognitive behavioural therapy, and OSA can be extremely effectively treated with CPAP – which has been shown to improve depressive symptoms.
If you are struggling with your mental health, then we advise you to speak to your GP. More information on mental health conditions can be found at Mind.
If you need help with diagnosing and treating your sleep, then book a consultation with one of our experts today.