Should You Take That Cat Nap? The Sleep Link To Mental Health

This is a modal window. No compatible source was found for this media. Sleep is important for us in many ways. We suffer mentally and physically when we do not get enough. It is the time our body repairs itself, releasing hormones for the benefit of damaged cells. Other hormones influence how our bodies use energy from food. Generally, we know that getting enough sleep is helpful. But that does not mean more sleep is better. Sleeping more than 11 hours can be a sign of poor mental health. For students, it can be linked to poor grades. Andrew Fuligni, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, wanted to find out what amount of sleep was perfect for mental health and learning. He and his team got to work with 421 Mexican-American kids in ninth and tenth grades to find out. They found that students with the best GPAs got 7.5 hours of sleep each night. However, students felt best when they averaged 8.75 hours of sleep per night. They were less riddled by anxiety and stress and instead felt more confident. They also found that having much more or less sleep resulted in poorer mental health. Cats can sleep up to 20 hours a day. “High-achieving kids make sacrifices in sleep,” Fuligni says. To get those high GPAs, many skimp on sleep. But, he adds, “There’s not necessarily a huge payoff.” That lost hour of sleep may be tied to a slight increase in GPA. But, he notes, it can come at a cost to mental health. Many of us try to repay the sleep debt we incurred during the week and usually in one of two ways: sleeping in on weekends or napping. Sometimes even both. The team found that teens that slept in suffered […]

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