04 Oct Inadequate Sleep and Mental Distress
In this week we want to talk about the importance of looking after our mental health and well-being and knowing how to support others. Mental health awareness is important because sadly the COVID-19 pandemic has produced unprecedented changes in our lives, generating significant stress, and worries about health, social isolation, employment, and finances.
This World Mental Health Day – October 10 – the message is simple: “Look after your mental health, Australia.”
It has been found that high stress levels and sleep deprivation may be the reason of several mental or physical health issues, such as depression, impaired memory, increased risk of heart disease and cancer, reduced immune system functioning, decreased motivation, weight gain, accidents, lowering workplace productivity, etc.
A recent research published online had as an aim to examine the association between inadequate sleep and frequent mental distress in US adults. For this study inadequate sleep was defined as 6 hours or less in a given night, and frequent mental distress was defined as self-reporting 14 days of mental health status as “not good” within the last month.
The survey question used to identify the exposure variable of interest reads, “On average, how many hours of sleep do you get in a 24-hour period?; and a specific one for mental distress was “Now thinking about your mental health, which includes stress, depression, and problems with emotions, for how many days during the past 30 days was your mental health not good?”
Thirteen percent of study participants experienced inadequate sleep, and 14.1% experienced frequent mental distress. Participants who averaged 6 hours or less of sleep per night were about 2.5 times more likely to have frequent mental distress when controlling for con-founders than those who slept more than 6 hours. Participants who were divorced/separated/widowed had twice the odds of frequent mental distress compared with study participants who were married. There was a dose–response association between education level and frequent mental distress. As education levels decreased, the odds of frequent mental distress increased
They concluded that inadequate sleep was associated with significantly increased odds of frequent mental distress. Additionally, inadequate sleep has been linked to poor biological measures, including hypertension, anaemia, and dyslipidaemia. Low amounts of sleep and the attributed chronic conditions could possibly have a negative impact on depressive symptoms
You can find more about this awareness day on https://lookafteryourmentalhealthaustralia.org.au/
#LookAfterYourMentalHealthAustralia and #WMHD2022 on social media.
References
- Blackwelder A, Hoskins M, Huber L. Effect of Inadequate Sleep on Frequent Mental Distress. Prev Chronic Dis. 2021 Jun 17;18:E61. doi: 10.5888/pcd18.200573. PMID: 34138697; PMCID: PMC8220958
- https://www.qldmentalhealthweek.org.au/
- https://lookafteryourmentalhealthaustralia.org.au/