Post by Admin on Feb 27, 2024 12:55:52 GMT
Investigating insomnia: our research shows how chronic sleep problems can lead to a spiralling decline in mental health
Published: February 26, 2024 5.24pm GMT
theconversation.com/investigating-insomnia-our-research-shows-how-chronic-sleep-problems-can-lead-to-a-spiralling-decline-in-mental-health-224131
I’ll often lie awake until three or four in the morning, before drifting off for just a few hours. Then comes the dreaded alarm clock. My mind and body are exhausted all the time – there’s always this knot of anxiety in my chest, doing away with any hope of a good night’s sleep.
Simon* is a NHS mental health nurse who, like millions of people in the UK, suffers from insomnia: a sustained difficulty in initiating and maintaining sleep. His job is to support the recovery of people with severe mental illness, but his own sleep problems have had a profoundly negative impact on his mental health.
Most of us experience a bad night’s sleep from time to time, but can usually get back on track within a night or two. People suffering from insomnia, by contrast, have sleep problems that last for months or years at a time, taking a major toll on their health and wellbeing.
Around a third of people will experience insomnia at some point in their life, with women and older people more often affected. Nearly 40% of sufferers fail to recover within five years. People with insomnia have an increased risk of diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. Insomnia is also a major risk factor for mental illness, and often co-occurs with mood disorders such as depression and anxiety.
Across the world, we’re seeing unprecedented levels of mental illness at all ages, from children to the very old – with huge costs to families, communities and economies. In this series, we investigate what’s causing this crisis, and report on the latest research to improve people’s mental health at all stages of life.
Many different life events can increase your chances of sustained sleep deprivation. Both the financial burden and confinement arising from the COVID-19 pandemic were associated with greater risk of insomnia, which is in turn likely to have led to a rise in mental health problems.
And yet, very little is known about why and how a prolonged absence of sleep gives rise to mental illness. Our team at the University of York has pioneered research into whether sleep deprivation disrupts the brain’s ability to suppress intrusive memories and distressing thoughts – classic symptoms of psychiatric disturbance.
It has also led us to ask whether it might one day be possible to treat mental illness while patients are sleeping – for example, by using sounds to normalise irregular patterns of brain activity during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.
Why are some people so badly affected?
They put their hand over my face so I couldn’t breathe. Now I can’t wear anything that covers my mouth or nose for fear of reliving [that experience]. Mask wearing was a big problem for me during the pandemic – and it was always worse when I slept badly. Just the sight of other people wearing masks could bring it all back.
Helen* is a domestic abuse survivor who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a debilitating condition characterised by flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety. She told us her symptoms would always get worse after a bad night’s sleep – a pattern reported by other PTSD sufferers we spoke to.
We can all sometimes encounter intrusive and unwanted thoughts, usually in response to reminders – for example, seeing a former partner and being reminded of an unpleasant breakup. While unsettling, these thoughts are infrequent, short-lived and, usually, quickly forgotten. This is in stark contrast to the highly lucid, distressing thoughts experienced by people with PTSD. Sufferers often engage in avoidant behaviour, such as not leaving home to reduce the likelihood of having to confront reminders of their trauma.
However, the symptoms of PTSD can also partly be explained by a breakdown of the brain mechanisms we rely on to push such intrusive thoughts out of conscious awareness. Because intrusive thoughts arise from unpleasant memories, another way people ward them off is by suppressing the offending content from their memory. But PTSD sufferers often exhibit a deficit in their ability to engage in this process of memory suppression, resulting in persistent unwanted patterns of thinking.
And what if lack of sleep reduces our ability to suppress unwanted thoughts and memories? This could lead to a downward spiral of more persistent and frightening intrusive thoughts, severe anxiety, and chronic sleeplessness – culminating in psychiatric disturbance.
Although a wealth of research has shown that sleep deprivation leads to psychological instability, our study was the first study to examine how an inability to control intrusive thoughts might underpin this relationship. For this reason, we worked with young adults without a diagnosed mental health disorder, allowing us to determine how even healthy brain processes go awry when people do not get enough sleep.
How sleep deprivation affects our brain
Our group of young adults (aged 18–25) were asked to memorise face-image pairs, comprising a male or female face with a neutral expression next to a unique scene. They would memorise each pair over and over again, so that any face presented in isolation would serve as a powerful reminder of the scene it was paired with – in the same way a reminder of an unpleasant event in the real world can trigger a distressing thought.
The face-scene learning took place late in the evening – after which half the participants went to sleep in our laboratory, and the other half stayed awake for the entire night – watching movies, playing games and going for short walks outside. They could eat and drink, but psychological stimulants such as caffeine were strictly prohibited. We would wake anyone in this group who nodded off.
Next morning, all participants were shown the faces only, in random order, with the following instructions. If the face was inside a green frame, the participant should allow the associated scene to come into their mind. A red frame meant they should engage in memory suppression to block out the scene – in the same way we sometimes purge unwanted thoughts from our conscious experience.
rest in link.
Published: February 26, 2024 5.24pm GMT
theconversation.com/investigating-insomnia-our-research-shows-how-chronic-sleep-problems-can-lead-to-a-spiralling-decline-in-mental-health-224131
I’ll often lie awake until three or four in the morning, before drifting off for just a few hours. Then comes the dreaded alarm clock. My mind and body are exhausted all the time – there’s always this knot of anxiety in my chest, doing away with any hope of a good night’s sleep.
Simon* is a NHS mental health nurse who, like millions of people in the UK, suffers from insomnia: a sustained difficulty in initiating and maintaining sleep. His job is to support the recovery of people with severe mental illness, but his own sleep problems have had a profoundly negative impact on his mental health.
Most of us experience a bad night’s sleep from time to time, but can usually get back on track within a night or two. People suffering from insomnia, by contrast, have sleep problems that last for months or years at a time, taking a major toll on their health and wellbeing.
Around a third of people will experience insomnia at some point in their life, with women and older people more often affected. Nearly 40% of sufferers fail to recover within five years. People with insomnia have an increased risk of diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. Insomnia is also a major risk factor for mental illness, and often co-occurs with mood disorders such as depression and anxiety.
Across the world, we’re seeing unprecedented levels of mental illness at all ages, from children to the very old – with huge costs to families, communities and economies. In this series, we investigate what’s causing this crisis, and report on the latest research to improve people’s mental health at all stages of life.
Many different life events can increase your chances of sustained sleep deprivation. Both the financial burden and confinement arising from the COVID-19 pandemic were associated with greater risk of insomnia, which is in turn likely to have led to a rise in mental health problems.
And yet, very little is known about why and how a prolonged absence of sleep gives rise to mental illness. Our team at the University of York has pioneered research into whether sleep deprivation disrupts the brain’s ability to suppress intrusive memories and distressing thoughts – classic symptoms of psychiatric disturbance.
It has also led us to ask whether it might one day be possible to treat mental illness while patients are sleeping – for example, by using sounds to normalise irregular patterns of brain activity during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.
Why are some people so badly affected?
They put their hand over my face so I couldn’t breathe. Now I can’t wear anything that covers my mouth or nose for fear of reliving [that experience]. Mask wearing was a big problem for me during the pandemic – and it was always worse when I slept badly. Just the sight of other people wearing masks could bring it all back.
Helen* is a domestic abuse survivor who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a debilitating condition characterised by flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety. She told us her symptoms would always get worse after a bad night’s sleep – a pattern reported by other PTSD sufferers we spoke to.
We can all sometimes encounter intrusive and unwanted thoughts, usually in response to reminders – for example, seeing a former partner and being reminded of an unpleasant breakup. While unsettling, these thoughts are infrequent, short-lived and, usually, quickly forgotten. This is in stark contrast to the highly lucid, distressing thoughts experienced by people with PTSD. Sufferers often engage in avoidant behaviour, such as not leaving home to reduce the likelihood of having to confront reminders of their trauma.
However, the symptoms of PTSD can also partly be explained by a breakdown of the brain mechanisms we rely on to push such intrusive thoughts out of conscious awareness. Because intrusive thoughts arise from unpleasant memories, another way people ward them off is by suppressing the offending content from their memory. But PTSD sufferers often exhibit a deficit in their ability to engage in this process of memory suppression, resulting in persistent unwanted patterns of thinking.
And what if lack of sleep reduces our ability to suppress unwanted thoughts and memories? This could lead to a downward spiral of more persistent and frightening intrusive thoughts, severe anxiety, and chronic sleeplessness – culminating in psychiatric disturbance.
Although a wealth of research has shown that sleep deprivation leads to psychological instability, our study was the first study to examine how an inability to control intrusive thoughts might underpin this relationship. For this reason, we worked with young adults without a diagnosed mental health disorder, allowing us to determine how even healthy brain processes go awry when people do not get enough sleep.
How sleep deprivation affects our brain
Our group of young adults (aged 18–25) were asked to memorise face-image pairs, comprising a male or female face with a neutral expression next to a unique scene. They would memorise each pair over and over again, so that any face presented in isolation would serve as a powerful reminder of the scene it was paired with – in the same way a reminder of an unpleasant event in the real world can trigger a distressing thought.
The face-scene learning took place late in the evening – after which half the participants went to sleep in our laboratory, and the other half stayed awake for the entire night – watching movies, playing games and going for short walks outside. They could eat and drink, but psychological stimulants such as caffeine were strictly prohibited. We would wake anyone in this group who nodded off.
Next morning, all participants were shown the faces only, in random order, with the following instructions. If the face was inside a green frame, the participant should allow the associated scene to come into their mind. A red frame meant they should engage in memory suppression to block out the scene – in the same way we sometimes purge unwanted thoughts from our conscious experience.
rest in link.