How Sleep Affects Your Mental Health

If you’re struggling with sleep or mental health, you’re not alone. This Mental Health Awareness Month, clinical psychologist and sleep researcher Dr. Mike Gradisar explores how sleep, anxiety and depression are connected, and what you can do to improve your rest and take care of your mind.

Poor sleep doesn’t just happen because of mental health problems, it can also contribute to them. Understanding this link helps to look after both your body and mind.

On the other hand, there are plenty of studies that show that if you can improve your sleep, you can improve mental health too, including symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Sleep and Depression are Connected

Taking care of your sleep can be a powerful tool to help prevent depression from developing.

Studies show that there’s a stronger link between trouble sleeping starting before depression, rather than the other way around. Research also found that it wasn’t necessarily how long people slept that was related to stronger levels of depression, but the amount of time awake in bed, like how much they woke up during the night and how long it took to fall asleep.

Teenagers are quite unique as their circadian rhythm timing is related to higher levels of depression. The later they fall asleep and the later they naturally wake up, the higher levels of depression they report. But, studies also show that teenagers with parentally set bedtimes have a lower risk of depression.

If you’re a teenager struggling with sleep and depression, or are looking after one who is, our Sleep Cycle online class for teenagers can help with techniques to set bedtimes and bring forward the body clock. Studies show that these techniques can help improve circadian timing, sleep and depression symptoms.

Anxiety Keeps the Body on High Alert

When we’re feeling anxious, we can experience ‘hyperarousal’. Hyperarousal is when the nervous system is heightened and people may experience a racing heart, fast breathing, and restlessness. Hyperarousal is also common during insomnia.

Our bodies naturally decrease arousal in the evening to get ready to sleep. When we’re in a period of stress or anxiety, this decline may be impaired by hyperarousal, making it harder to fall and stay asleep.

Hyperarousal has a mental side too. Cognitive arousal can feel like racing thoughts or worrying about the future. When we experience anxiety and cognitive arousal, it can be difficult to get to sleep.

How CBT Can Help

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is proven to treat anxiety and insomnia. Research shows even short CBT for Insomnia (CBT-I) programs can reduce anxiety in adults, teens, and children.

There are some cognitive techniques you can learn at home and practice to help improve your sleep, like constructive worry, cognitive refocusing, or a mindfulness body scan. You can learn the basics for free from Sleep Cycle’s online classes.