![]() ![]() Undeniably, we also need sleep problems to be taken more seriously by health professionals. We need much more research into these mechanisms. Without adequate sleep, negative thoughts can intensify. A vicious cycle can emerge: because you’re exhausted, your psychological problems feel even more intense-which in turn makes it harder to get a proper night’s rest. But for many people insomnia can be part of the complex package of causes. Sleeping badly doesn’t mean you’ll develop depression or start hearing voices. But the idea that insomnia is merely a product of these other difficulties doesn’t stack up.Įxperiencing insomnia isn’t an inevitable precursor to mental health issues. Insomnia isn’t the sole cause of complex psychological problems. ![]() What is evident, though, is that the current view of sleep problems needs radical revision. We don't know whether our results would have been different with a more diverse set of participants, though there’s no strong reason to suppose that they would. Improvements in sleep were large for the other problems we tended to see small to moderate gains. ![]() Their level of happiness was improved and they could function better too. That was no surprise, but what we were really interested in were the effects on other psychological problems.Īnd indeed the participants who received the sleep treatment were also less likely to report excessive mistrust, hallucinatory experiences, anxiety, depression, and nightmares. The students assigned the CBT course reported much lower levels of insomnia. We also asked participants to reflect upon and challenge some less helpful beliefs about sleep, like “If I don’t get at least eight hours I won't be able to function,” for example. Mindful meditation was featured, for example, and so too was encouraging people to put time aside to reflect on their day before going to bed. Once you’re sleeping for all or most of those six hours in bed, you can gradually build it up.ĭifferent cognitive strategies were used to help the participants reassess the way they viewed the business of getting to sleep. And you limit the amount of time you spend in bed to the number of hours sleep you’re currently getting-say six hours. For example, if you’re not sleeping after twenty minutes, you don't lie there worrying: you get up and do something relaxing instead. Under the “behavior” heading participants tried techniques designed to build an association between being in bed and sleep (rather than sleeplessness). Conducted at the University of Oxford’s Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute, with support from colleagues in universities across the UK and funding from the Wellcome Trust, we recruited over 3700 students with insomnia from 26 British universities. This week in the Lancet Psychiatry, we report on what may be the largest randomized controlled trial of an intervention for a mental health issue. Insomnia may not simply be a result of psychological disorders: it may also help cause them. The assumption has been that when the depression lifts or the anxiety abates, sleep will automatically improve.īut now it seems that we may have been putting the horse before the cart. Indeed, there’s no pressing need to deal with them. That means insomnia languishes way down in the list of problems to be tackled. ![]() The conventional view among mental health professionals is that where sleep problems co-exist with other psychological difficulties, insomnia is essentially a product of them: you can’t sleep because you’re anxious, for example, or because your depression means that you’re not physically active during the day. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |