Sleep and its connection to Mental Health - The Meeting Matters

    Sleep and its Connection to Mental Health

Sleep is a natural part of the human experience. We exist, and we sleep. However, when we don’t and disrupt the course of nature. It comes with inevitable side effects. For example, you’re more likely to gorge on junk food when you’re on a diet. You’re more prone to getting into arguments with others. You’re clumsier, uncoordinated and forgetful than normal. All because you skipped a good night’s sleep.

One might ask why? Well, the answer lies in brain chemistry, the REM cycle and other empirical scientific stuff.

What happens when we practice bad sleeping habits?

Our actions have consequences. Pulling an all-nighter studying for an exam or completing your overdue project, binging your favourite TV series on Netflix at the expense of your sleep. As night dissolves to day so do your cognitive functions like memory, attention, reaction time, and thought processes.

Cognitive Impairment

They become less efficient. Muddled. Your short-term memory fails you. Your key, your wallet, your sanity – where are they? You can’t remember. Focusing – if not already a grave challenge in today’s attention economy – becomes difficult, which then trickles down to other things like holding meaningful conversations, performing basic mathematical functions, and retaining essential information for survival. Driving when sleep-deprived is a risky endeavour because your delayed reaction time and impaired focus can get you into a road accident.

Increased Negative Emotionality

Keep this up long enough – devoiding yourself of sleep – and your emotional regulation will dysregulate, making you an irritable, impulsive and reactionary individual. Your mood will fluctuate irregularly, and you’ll act out of character, more uncivilised than usual. You will likely overeat, overspend, overthink, and lash out at the slightest hint of instigation. Your self-control and resilience goes down the drain, and situations you otherwise would have easily managed, now turn you into an incompetent stress case.

Neurosis

If you further continue down this glorious path of your poor sleeping regime, you will slowly turn into a caricature of yourself who merely reacts to stimuli, doesn’t remember anything and is excessively sad, anxious or angry. Anxiety disorders and depressive disorders are waiting on the other side of the sleep deprivation door.

Psychosis and Perceptual Distortions

If you’re still not convinced that sleep affects your psychological well-being, then try staying awake for 11 nights straight. Perhaps some delusions coupled with auditory, somatic and visual hallucinations can offer a change in perspective. Take for instance Robert Gardner who ventured into extreme sleep deprivation territories i.e. precisely 11 days (246 hours) only to experience its dire side effects.

Neurological Damage

Among the many disadvantages of inadequate sleep is dementia. Permanent brain decline. No cure. Just decay, forgetfulness and eventual death. The plethora of behavioural and psychological issues that accompany it are also concerning.

The Cyclic Connection between Sleep and Mental Disorders

Now, interestingly, the conventional path to connecting sleep and mental health has always been in the opposite direction. i.e., it is the mental disorders in the DSM-5 TR that cause sleep disturbances. However, recent studies are showing that the current flows both ways; sleep deprivation or oversleeping carry their own damage. Your mind, nervous system and psyche can only handle so much until they crash. The risk for psychosis, mood disorder, depression and anxiety significantly rise, due to sleep deprivation.

Conclusion

The REM cycle must be complete, this only occurs in uninterrupted deep sleep. Your brain needs to cleanse itself. This mechanism is impossible if your sleep is superficial, or broken. And if the said process does not take place, then stress, impaired cognitions, depression, anxiety, and psychosis will take its place. There’s a natural order to everything. Everything we do, every existing biological phenomena we go through, carries its mandatory purpose. That is why its essential to get adequate sleep.