The importance of sleep in our daily life can’t be stressed enough. Going without sleep for even 24 hours straight reduces our productivity by half and significantly dents our cognitive ability. Most of the physical and mental body repair functions happen during sleep, which is why we feel tired and less cognitively active when we wake up not properly rested from the last night’s sleep.
Undoubtedly, we need plenty of sleep to keep our brains healthy. Going without sleep for some days in a row can be dire for our mental health, with consequences ranging from mild mood changes to severe psychiatric disorders.
How sleep deprivation affects mental health
For years, researchers and scientists had been focused on proving that sleep deprivation is an aftereffect of mental illness, which meant that mental illness led to a lack of sleep and not vice versa.
However, after a number of researches, there has been a glaring counter-observation for scientists and researchers — a big contribution of sleep deprivation to mental illness. It has been established that lack of sleep may cause mental illness, and reduced slumber is not just an effect.
This theory was further proven in a Harvard study, in which a group of students was kept awake for 35 hours straight to observe how the lack of sleep affected their brains. For comparison, an alternate control group was formed which got an adequate amount of rest.
The scientists then showed a series of images to both these groups. The photos ranged from neutral images like buildings to disturbing images like violence and burn victims.
Scientists witnessed radically different behaviors from sleep-deprived students than from the ones that had normal rest.
In a clinical setup, it was observed that the amygdala, the emotion experiencing part of the brain, was triggering a fight-or-flight response in the sleep-deprived population. The amygdala in the control group, however, was connecting to the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for logical decision making.
The results clearly demonstrated that a lack of enough sleep leads our brain to interpret even normal surroundings as threats. This response gets worse as we increase the time people are kept from getting their normal sleep.
On the other hand, when we get enough rest, our brain gets better at processing outside information and distinguishes between perceived and real threats, helping us make more rational decisions.
What is Psychosis
One of the major symptoms of several mental disorders is Psychosis, which means an impaired sense of reality. Psychosis is a broad term that implies the affected person starts to experience things that are non-existent and believes things that have no basis.
A psychotic episode is commonly characterized by hallucinations and delusions.
Hallucinations are sensory experiences that seem to be real to the affected person but are created only in the mind. For example, in auditory hallucinations, the affected person might hear his name even when he is not called out or hear other sounds that are not there. In visual hallucinations, the affected person might see something that doesn’t exist, like seeing a car approaching him while it’s not actually there.
There could be a number of other hallucinating conditions based on the criticality of the hallucinating episode.
Psychotic delusions are characterized by a strong belief in things that are not true. The impaired sense of reality causes a marked difference between the perceived or believed reality and the actual reality.
Apart from getting hallucinated and delusional, people with psychotic episodes also experience disorganization, loss of motivation, depressed mood, difficulty concentrating, social withdrawal, disorganized speech, and heightened anxiety.
One of the serious mental disorders symptomized by psychosis is schizophrenia, which leads to an abnormal interpretation of reality. People affected with schizophrenia have difficulty performing daily tasks because of the combinations of hallucinations, delusions, and disorderly thinking.
Causes of Psychosis
The causes of psychosis can be different from person to person. Psychosis can be caused by certain illnesses, drug overuse, genetics, hormonal changes, and even lack of sleep.
Illnesses that lead to psychosis include brain diseases like Parkinson’s disease, brain tumor and cysts, Huntington’s disease, and certain other chromosomal disorders. Other dementias that may lead to psychosis include HIV, Alzheimer’s disease, syphilis, strokes, and some kinds of epilepsy.
Types of psychosis
Psychosis episodes can be of different kinds with their intensity varying based on the triggers of those episodes. Here are some common types of psychosis episodes.
Genetic psychosis: Like all genetic disorders, genetic psychosis also develops if there is a history of mental illness in the family. This kind of psychosis is generally tamed by consistent use of medications and extensive care.
Brief psychotic disorder: This type of psychosis occurs for a brief period when people experience events or periods of extreme stress. In most cases, people recover in days or weeks based on how long the impact has been. In some cases, therapeutical or medical help may be required for recovery.
Substance-induced psychosis: Substances like alcohol and drugs, including stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamine also cause psychotic episodes. Prolonged use of drugs like LSD that cause hallucinations can also lead to psychosis. The hallucinations and delusions also come up in withdrawal symptoms when people go off drugs and alcohol after they have been addicted to it for a long time.
Organic psychosis: Generally caused by illnesses or head injuries that alter the functioning of the brain.
Sleep and Psychosis
While lack of sleep alone is seldom responsible for psychosis, it can create a fertile ground for psychotic episodes in people with other pre-existing conditions like Parkinson’s disease and tumors.
The association of psychotic disorders with sleep dysfunction was clinically established long ago in 1919 when some case studies suggested that abundant sleep in affected patients helped improve the condition of people with mental illness.
Other studies noted that patients with mental disorders have a frequently disturbed sleep, which aggravates the problems and psychotic symptoms. Patients refuse to sleep because they want to see what happens during the night or they fear some harm to themselves while they are asleep.
Sometimes the psychotic experiences themselves don’t let patients sleep. They hear unreal voices that prevent them from sleeping. The more tired they are for sleep, the worse it gets, creating a vicious circle of sleeplessness and psychotic experiences.
Even in a healthier population, psychotic-like experiences can develop due to a prolonged lack of sleep, with intensity and frequency of episodes increasing with the time people have spent not sleeping.
Sleep and other psychiatric disorders
As stated earlier, psychosis is a common symptom in several serious psychotic disorders. All such sleep disorders get worse with lack of sleep and some of them are even caused by sleep deficiency.
Depression
Several studies have pointed out the link between depression and lack of sleep. The concurrent existence of sleep problems in depressed children is as high as 90% as per some studies. These findings conclude that sleep issues are more likely to lead to depression. Furthermore, the risk of relapse during treatment is greater if sleep issues continue during therapies and medications.
Anxiety
The link between anxiety and sleep deprivation or insomnia is even more deep-rooted than depression. That’s because it’s a circular enigma. The lesser you sleep, the more anxious you will be and the more anxious you will be the lesser you will be able to sleep.
Bipolar Disorder
In bipolar disorder, people have extreme episodes of excess happiness and severe depression. The manic episodes are most of the time linked with lesser rest in bipolar disorders, which are followed by excess sleep episodes as the patient shifts into deep depression.
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
ADHD reduces the patient’s ability to pay attention and focus. Doctors have a hard time deciphering the link between poor sleep and the disorder in ADHD patients because patients find it difficult to sleep or stay unconscious, which further reduces the ability to pay attention.
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a serious condition in which the patients have an abnormal interpretation of reality. The disorder is characterized by hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia. In studies, it has been found that patients who don’t get rest for 24 hours began witnessing symptoms that resembled the symptoms in schizophrenia. When the lack of sleep lasted for a couple of nights, the brain lost its power to filter information properly and patients behaved more abnormally.
Symptoms of sleep deprivation and early psychotic disorder
Almost all psychotic disorders come with plenty of precedence and warnings. The ones that are addressed early don’t rise in severity and do a lot less damage than the ones that are ignored and left unaddressed. The following are some of these symptoms that warrant immediate attention for early diagnosis of disorders.
Lack of Focus: Reduced ability to focus and concentrate is natural if you go without sleep for some time. If you are constantly sleep-deprived, your ability to focus on important tasks gets diminished significantly.
Daytime Sleepiness and Microsleep: A regular lack of good night sleep causes day time sleepiness and frequent episodes of microsleep. When such episodes happen too frequently, they become a cause of concern and must be looked into seriously.
Mood fluctuations: Mood changes are common at the onset of psychotic disorders. Frequent episodes of irritation, grumpiness, and constant state of worry are some of the traits that must not be left unchecked. In this state, even smaller annoyances of life can lead to out-of-proportion outbursts, impacting the patients and the people around them.
Reduced productivity and performance: A decline in work or academic performance is also caused by mental disorders. If can have a devastating impact if it continues for longer periods.
Memory and cognitive issues: Consistently missing important tasks and difficulty making even trivial decisions of life can be another worry that must be addressed before it turns into a full-blown psychotic disorder.
Pre-emptive care for sleep-induced psychosis
Taking care of your mental health is way more important than most people think. Most people don’t even give a thought to the reasons behind their bad bad mood and lack of focus, which instead must be addressed as quickly as they are noticed.
Here are some interventions and treatments that will prevent mental disorders and help people nip the problem in the bud right at the onset.
Adopt an active and healthy lifestyle: If your sleep problems are due to an unfitting lifestyle, you must make necessary changes to mend the sleep issues. Avoid stimulants like caffeine and alcohol near bedtime, stay clear from drugs, and exercise regularly to do away with your sleep problems.
Maintain sleep hygiene and comfort: Is your bedroom too cluttered? Is it too noisy when you sleep? Do you not have set times for going to bed and waking up? Is your mattress to uncomfortable? If the answers to any of these questions is affirmative, you must take due care to get it right immediately.
Relax: Mental relaxation is equally more important than physical relaxation. Give yourself enough time to rejuvenate. Listen to soothing music after a stressful day at work, cook your favorite meal, and meditate at least a few minutes a day to keep your brain healthy.
Seek therapeutic or medical care: A visit to the sleep therapist is certainly a wise thing to do when you are unsure of what’s coming between you and your sleep. Even when you have clarity on the subject, seeking therapeutic and medical care is a wise decision for early detection and cure of mental illness.
Conclusion
As per major studies, more than a third of the population in the developed world is going through some sort of mental illness. The number will be even higher in the developing world due to the higher hardships of life in developing countries.
Even then, mental care doesn’t get the attention it rightly deserves. Bad mood, irritability and a consistent feeling of dissatisfaction and stress are assumed to be the inherent nature of people. Lack of medical care further worsens the mental states leading to higher rates of suicides.
While sleeping well isn’t the ultimate solution, it helps a lot in combating mental illnesses and symptoms like psychosis. If patients sleep well, they behave better than more than 90% of the patients who have not been taking enough rest. When patients get enough sleep, they are more receptive to therapies, medications, and the general care that’s needed to bring them back to normalcy.
A general lack of sleep due to whatever reason shouldn’t be taken casually. Going without sleep for even a couple of days can bring about a host of mental illnesses that can have significant impact on your well being. Therefore, sleep well, sleep on time, and change whatever you need to get a good night’s sleep.
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