Most people can identify the effects of a bad run of sleep: you feel a bit removed from your immediate surroundings, you move slower, you can’t think properly and might get a bit snappy. Prolonged poor sleep can affect your memory, your ability to learn, your ability to concentrate and your ability to react.
And then there’s your mood. The relationship between poor sleep and mental illness is an eternal chicken-or-the-egg paradox. If you sleep badly you are more likely to develop a mental illness. If you have a mental illness, it is much harder to sleep. Cruel, isn’t it?
People who suffer from insomnia and/or sleep apnoea are more likely to suffer from low mood and eventually depression. Early waking (waking at, say, 3am, and being unable to return to sleep) is associated with depression. Lying awake and ruminating over worries is associated with anxiety. There are some dark and desperate thoughts that only come in the small hours.
People who suffer from Bipolar Affective Disorder often have a very troubled relationship with sleep. One of the symptoms of escalating mania is reduced need for sleep and a tremendous sense of energy. But what goes up must come down and the next part of the cycle is a depression where the person may spend all their hours in bed. Not necessarily sleeping, but unable to face the world outside the bedroom. The regulation and monitoring of sleep is a crucial part of staying well for a person with BPAD.
What is a good night’s sleep? Without referring to actual hours, because people are many and varied in their sleep requirements, a good night’s sleep is when you are asleep for most of the whole time you are in bed, you feel refreshed by it and you don’t need to sleep again until the following evening.
Articles about sleep improvement abound in printed and online media. There are certain basic tips about “sleep hygiene” that are oft-repeated, and it doesn’t hurt to follow them.
Alcohol will make you feel drowsy and relaxed initially, but it won’t give you prolonged, good quality sleep. Try to keep regular hours for sleeping and avoid screen time when you are winding down. “Listen” out for your circadian rhythms and catch your sleep train, before it passes and you get a second wind.
But the real, seasoned, hard-core insomniacs among us will scoff at the simplicity of this advice and prepare to meet one more tired day and frustrating night.
