When under stress or in the midst of dealing with a crisis, sleep problems are often one of the first symptoms to emerge. Adults can have trouble getting their minds to settle down so that they can get to sleep. Children may begin experiencing nightmares or regress in their sleep habits. They may suddenly find it difficult to sleep in their own room and want to bed up with their parents, or they may wake up several times during the night and need parental assistance. Children, too, can suffer from stress-related insomnia.

How sleep problems affect our emotions & mental health

Making matters worse, not only can stressful life events create sleep problems, but sleep problems can also aggravate a person’s trauma symptoms, stress, or depression, creating a self-reinforcing cycle that makes it difficult to cope.

Sleep deprivation causes levels of the stress hormone cortisol to rise, further feeding into negative thought patterns. If a person is already dealing with something stressful, raising their stress levels further will only make their other problems that much more difficult to manage. Problems that disrupt our normal sleep cycles, meanwhile, rob a person of REM sleep, making it more difficult to consolidate memories and “get our head straight” so to speak. Sleep is when the mind reorganizes and repairs itself. (Tonini & Cirelli, 2013) When this process suffers, so does our mental health.

The link between sleep problems and mental health disorders

Thanks to a plethora of research in recent years, a lack of sleep is now emerging as a potential factor in a number of psychological problems and mental illnesses. For example:

1. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed the medical records of nearly 10,000 American adults with sleep apnea. They found men diagnosed with this sleep disorder had twice the risk of depression, and women 5-times the risk, when compared to those without sleep apnea. (Levine, 2012)
2. An August 2012 study in Medical Hypotheses found that about 25% to 50% of children and adolescents with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder experience sleep problems. (ibid)
3. Another study in the journal Pediatrics asked parents of 11,000 children about their child’s sleeping habits. It was found that children who were observed to have disordered breathing in their sleep had 40% more behavioral difficulties at 4-years-old and 60% more at age 7. (ibid)
4. A different study in the March 2012 Journal of Mental Health Policy and Economics found that adolescents who reported daytime drowsiness were more likely to feel sad throughout the day. (ibid)
5. A recent study found that treating sleep disorders could also improve mood. After treating 779 patients with sleep apnea for an average of 90 days with a machine that corrected the problem, patients had less depressive symptoms than before the treatment. (ibid)
6. A 2007 study in the American Journal of Psychiatry by Dr. Charles Hoge, a senior scientist with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, and his colleagues found that more than 70% of veterans with PTSD symptoms reported trouble sleeping. No other condition – not panic or pain or an inability to work – was as common, raising questions about which disorder causes which. (Cloud, 2012) It’s likely that they feed off each other, the PTSD creating sleep problems, and sleep problems making the PTSD worse.