Sleep and Disease
Sleep and sleep-related problems play a role in a large number of health problems and affect almost every field of medicine.
Sleeping problems occur in almost all people with mental disorders, including those with depression, anxiety and schizophrenia. People with depression or anxiety, for example, often awaken during the night and/or in the early hours of the morning and find themselves unable to get back to sleep. The amount of sleep a person gets also strongly influences the symptoms of mental disorders. Sleep deprivation is an effective therapy for people with certain types of depression, while it can actually cause depression in other people.
Sleeping problems are common in many other disorders as well, including heart disease, asthma and obstructive lung disease, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, cancer and head injury. These sleeping problems may arise from changes in the brain regions that control sleep, or from the drugs used to control symptoms of other disorders. In patients who are hospitalized or who receive round-the-clock care, treatment schedules or hospital routines also may disrupt sleep. Once sleeping problems develop, they can add to a person’s impairment and cause confusion, frustration or depression. Sleep disturbance is associated with poorer outcomes from their medical or psychiatric disorders. Better management of sleeping problems in people who have other disorders could thus, improve these patients’ health and quality of life.
