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Mental Health

7 mins.

29 September 2022

How is sleep related to depression?

Sleep is one of the main constituents of our well-being. As such, it also plays a very important role in our mental health. Tragically, recent years have seen a significant increase in the number of cases of depression diagnosis.

Depression is widely spread, and it is also a highly complex psychopathological condition that affects an individual’s cognitive, emotional, and behavioural aspects. It is distinguished by psychological symptoms such as hopelessness, sense of powerlessness, severe sensation of despair, feelings of guilt, as well as memory and attention difficulties and thoughts of suicide. Physical symptoms include widespread weakness, psychomotor slowness or agitation, alterations in circadian rhythm and sleep-wake cycle, hunger, and sexual abnormalities.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) currently considers depression to be one of the top ten causes of disability. Moreover, it is expected to become the second most common cause of disability among chronic diseases.

Sleep, stress and depression

Recent findings have illustrated the link between depression and insomnia. Notably insomnia is also highly related to stress

Scientists share the idea that biological and physiological predispositions in humans make some of us more prone to insomnia than others. When people are exposed to significant stressful events, we can experience an acute episode of insomnia.

Remarkably, this model has been refined: the possibility of a major stressful event alone is not enough to trigger insomnia. Currently, it is often considered that personality traits are more important, if not equally important, to a stressful event. In other words, a person’s ability to manage stress is crucial. For example, a person with good stress-managing skills is less likely to develop an acute episode of insomnia than someone who is not good at managing stress. For this reason, adopting stress management techniques is not only good for coping with unprecedented situations, but also for you overall well-being and health.

Sleep: a loyal ally

Insomnia is recognised as one of the most critical risk factors for depression, but scientific research has demonstrated the effectiveness and the importance of good sleep against depression. Enhancing sleep quality and treating insomnia in patients with depression may generally reduce the overall symptoms.

A scientific study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine tested the correlation between sleep and depression. Although the number of participants was not very large, this experiment gives us good hope for depression treatments.

Forty-four insomniac military personnel were tested for their depression level before and after the treatment of cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia to improve their sleep quality. 28 individuals screened positive for depression at pre-treatment examination, but after the treatment, 64% of the participants reported better sleep quality. At the posttreatment evaluation, 44% of the patients with decreased insomnia exhibited a clinically meaningful decrease in depressive symptoms. Remarkably, 50% no longer satisfied the criteria for depression. In the group where the insomnia level did not change, not one showed a significant reduction in depressive symptoms.

The results showed that in subjects in which the intervention was effective (i.e., the sleep quality improved), the depression-related symptoms also improved. Significantly, this experiment showed that interventions that can enhance sleep quality could effectively reduce symptoms of depression.

Depression and REM sleep

Additionally, if we record the brain activity of a patient with depression during sleep, we can notice some peculiarities, these are:

  1. Longer time needed to fall asleep.
  2. Increased nights and early mornings awakenings.
  3. Changes in the Rapid Eye Movement phase – which, in turn, can be related to dysfunctional mood regulation.

Although REM sleep abnormalities have been linked to depression for decades, their significance in depressive symptoms has never been fully understood. One of the problems related to depression was a deterioration of memory and inadequate sleep diminishes the ability to retain new information. Sleep is then crucial for declarative and procedural memory. Ultimately, this is another reason why scientists have also postulated that REM sleep disturbance could be linked to depression, contributing to both cognitive distortions and dysfunctions.

Takeaway

As highlighted in this article, disturbed sleep greatly affects people in terms of having the probability of developing symptoms of depression. But as discussed, improving your sleep quality can also lead to having an improved mental hygiene.

A key finding in recent scientific research also addressed acute exercise as an easy and effective way to reduce depressive symptoms. Exercise training has antidepressant effects that are similar in efficacy to pharmacotherapy. Moreover, improved subjective sleep quality in older adults is strongly associated with reductions in depressive symptoms.

Sleep better with Sunrise by Emma

Getting the right kind of sleep has great benefits for your overall mental hygiene. Here at Sunrise by Emma, we aim to provide helpful sleep tips to everyone so they can get a better night’s sleep with our topics on sleep health and sleep wellness. It’s not easy living with mental illness, but we hope that we’re able to somehow offer helpful advice when it comes to your sleep quality.

You can also opt to check out Emma UK for mattresses and pillows that can overall improve the way you sleep, and help you wake up better in the morning.

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