Whether you’re planning to invest in a buckwheat pillow or have a whole nightly routine to help your busy brain settle down, you can’t deny that sleep is something that we have been told to prioritize time and time again. Health and science classes have likely been telling you the importance of sleep for maintaining a healthy body and copious amounts of research have been done on the topic. Even if you haven’t been keeping up with the academic journals, most of us have probably experienced the grogginess and regret that accompanies staying up too late and having to rely on caffeine to get us through the next day.  

Just as sleep plays a fairly large role in maintaining one’s physical wellbeing, it also plays an important role in preserving our mental health. Psychologists have linked poor sleeping habits to a variety of issues including higher stress and higher likelihood for mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety. So what is it about sleep that makes it so indispensable?

Why Do We Need To Sleep?

Sleeping is an indispensable physical process needed to sustain life just like eating, hydrating and breathing. Sleep is so important because it’s basically one of the few times the body can actively recover from both mental and physical strain that we have put on our body and brain throughout the day. This is partially why you may feel tired and irritable throughout the day if you didn’t get enough sleep the night before. 

Additionally, when we sleep, the brain tends to process emotional information that we didn’t manage to address during our waking hours. This typically happens during Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep and is believed to be partially responsible for what we dream about at night. Lack of sleep and therefore not being able to enter the REM sleep stage enough can affect our ability to consolidate positive emotional content which leads to higher instances of depression and anxiety. 

How Much Sleep Do I Actually Need?

It depends on your age group. A typical adult tends to need somewhere between 7-9 hours of sleep while teens and younger children need even more to ensure healthy physical and mental growth. That being said, the quality of sleep is more important than the quantity.

Excessive sleeping can also be an indicator of underlying health issues since it indicates that the body’s quality of sleep is poor and therefore the person does not feel like they have the energy to get up. This is partially why you sleep so much more whenever you get physically ill and injured as well since more energy needs to be devoted to physical healing and therefore the body demands more rest.

So Will I Develop Mental Health Conditions If I Don’t Get Enough Sleep?

There’s no straightforward answer to this. Brain activity during sleep is still a field of study that has much room for exploration. Although we are aware that different stages of sleep such as REM and Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM) exist, what exactly the brain is doing during those processes is not something we can completely accurately pinpoint. That being said, there does seem to be a correlation between prolonged poor sleep and mental health conditions such as depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder amongst many others. 

Current research suggests that the relationship between mental health conditions and poor sleep is bi-directional, so while poor sleep may not be the main contributing factor towards such mental health conditions, it definitely can affect and be affected by them. 

One possible reason for this is that poor sleep can cause the ability of a person to regulate their emotions and problem solve to be hindered, this means that when faced with the stressors of daily life, a person may find that they have difficulties coping and resolving these problems. In turn, this can cause their self esteem to be affected and their mood to be negatively affected which can negatively impact one’s mental health. Additionally, many mental health conditions also inhibit the production of certain brain chemicals such as dopamine and serotonin, which can affect a person’s ability to fall asleep and their subsequent sleep quality. 

Oftentimes, poor sleep quality or an inability to sleep can indicate underlying health conditions such as excess stress. So while poor sleep is likely not the direct cause for mental health conditions, we cannot deny that there is a strong relationship between the two. 

There’s no denying that sleep is an important factor in ensuring good overall health. Poor sleep is linked to a multitude of health issues both physical and mental and can cause them to worsen over a prolonged period of time. So the next time you may be tempted to pull an all-nighter in the interest of rushing an assignment or filing documents, you may wish to consider not doing so in the interest of preserving your own wellbeing.