Sleep and mental health in young people
The powerful link between sleep and mental health in young people was the subject of one of our recent Making Knowledge Matter webinars.
The Making Knowledge Matter series is based on specific programmes of mental health related research and this one was led by Associate Professor of Psychology, Dr Faith Orchard, and our CEO, Dr Hannah Vickery. Faith is involved in several programmes of research exploring different approaches to working on sleep difficulties.
Faith opened the webinar with some concerning figures from her own research showing that adolescents with less total sleep time on school nights were predicted higher rates of anxiety and depression across later adolescence and early adulthood. Daytime sleepiness, night waking and perception of sleep also predicted depression at the same ages. Conversely, research shows that improvement in sleep leads to positive changes in mental health.
There are many techniques that parents/carers and young people can use to improve sleep. Faith discussed key aspects of sleep hygiene, for example getting exercise during the day, reducing use of electronics in the evening, and reducing caffeine.
She also explored ‘sleep inertia’, where young people struggle to wake up, and recommended the use of a routine that might include refraining from snoozing, taking a shower and playing upbeat music.
Faith stressed the importance of regular sleep-wake times, including at weekends, to help the body get into a rhythm. As well as that, the bedroom needs to be associated with sleeping, not with being awake and active. Where possible, children could complete homework in a separate room, watch TV in the living room, and only sleep in bed.
For young people who struggle to go to sleep, distraction can help – for example by trying something quite challenging but that does not generate any particular emotion, such as counting back from 1,000 in sevens. If they are still awake after 15-20 minutes, Faith recommends they get out of bed and return later when they feel more tired, so that they don’t associate their bed with being awake.
As Faith explained in the webinar, accessing specialist sleep interventions is one of the major problems facing young people experiencing sleep difficulties.
Currently, only the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust offers one for young people as part of its mental health provision – The Better Sleep Programme which is being evaluated by Faith and her team.
This intervention uses Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I), but it’s not routinely available in youth mental health services. Faith is now leading a Wellcome Trust-funded research project into CBT-I as a sleep intervention for young people with anxiety and depression in school-based mental health services.
The Charlie Waller Trust is leading on this exciting project’s Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) work, with the Trust’s CEO Hannah Vickery as Co-Investigator and two of our youth ambassadors joining the research steering group.
