You are probably aware that sleep does affect your mood. After a tiresome sleepless night, you may be a lot more irritable, short-tempered and highly vulnerable to stress. Once you get that good night’s sleep, your mood should return back to normal. Studies have shown that even partial sleep deprivation has an effect on your mood. A university in America found that subject who were limited to 4.5 hours of sleep per night, for one week reported feeling more stressed, angry, sad and mentally exhausted. When the subject returned back to their normal state of sleep, they reported a dramatic improvement in mood.
Not only does sleep affect mood, but mood and mental states can also affect your sleep. Having anxiety increases agitation and arousal which makes it increasingly harder to sleep. Stress also is a key factor in affecting sleep as it makes the body aroused, awake and alert. Sleeping problems generally occur in those who are under constant stress or who have abnormally exaggerated responses to stress.
If you are sleeping poorly, and it is affecting your mood leading you to feel depressed, have anxiety and less emotionally responsive there may be a treatment out there that could help. You need to ideally take a look at your sleeping habits, and see if you can do anything to improve the quantity and quality of your sleep. If you’re still having no look, you may want to seek medical advice to evaluate your sleeping plan and help you with any mental health concerns you may have. Once you have had an evaluation, you can be advised the best course of treatment to help improve your moods and get you that all important good night’s sleep. Your aim is to get a solid eight hours sleep per night to ensure optimum results the next morning, anything more is a bonus, anything significantly less may need looking at.
