different societies and
communities. Mental health will
affect everyone from despite one’s
age, sex, income or ethnicity.
Biological factors, lifestyle choices,
social and financial circumstance
shapes a person’s mental health.
Most of the people who have mental
health disorders will have more than
one condition. It is advisable for
people with mental health disorders
to seek help from the doctors. But
there are things that we can do on
our own to avoid compromising
our mental health. Sleep and mental
health are closely connected. Lack of
sleep will affect your psychological
state and mental health. People with
mental health problems are more
likely to have insomnia or other sleep
disorders. One of the problems that
patients with anxiety, depression,
bipolar disorder and attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have
in common is sleep, be it the lack of
sleep or too much. Back then, clinicians
who treated patients with psychiatric
disorders have viewed insomnia and
other sleep disorders as symptoms.
Studies have shown that sleep may
raise the risk that can contribute to the
development of a psychiatric disorder.
These studies were done on both adults
and children. The brain basis of the
relationship between mental health and
sleep is not yet fully understood. Neuroimaging
and neurochemistry studies
found out that in order to foster both
mental and emotional resilience,one
must get a good night sleep. Lack of
sleep will inadvertently cause the patient
to suffer from negative thinking
and emotional vulnerability. It is important
to understand some key points
regarding sleep problems as it is more
likely to affect patients who suffer from
psychiatric disorders rather than the
general population. Sleep problems can
also increase the chances of developing
certain mental illnesses. To have a better
understanding, learning about how
sleep. affects mental health is vital. Every
90 minutes, a person who’s asleep will cycle
between two major categories of sleep
known as the quiet sleep and REM (rapid
eye movement) sleep. It varies as everyone
has a different amount of time for
sleeping. During quiet sleep, the person
will go through four stages of increasingly
deep sleep. Their body temperatures will
drop, the muscle will relax and heart rate
will beat slowly. The deepest part of the
quiet sleep produces physiological changes
that will help boost the immune system.
or the REM sleep, it is the period where
the person enters a dream. Their body
temperature, blood pressure, heart rate
and breathing will increase. Studies show
that REM sleeps enhanced our learning
and memory parts. It contributes to emotional
health but in a more complex way.
Although scientists are still trying to understand
all the mechanisms of sleep, they
have discovered that disruption of sleep
will cause havoc in the brain, impairing
thinking and emotional regulation. This
is due to the fact that tter and stress hormones
among other things. There are
more than 70 types of sleep disorder.
Some of the most common sleep disorders
are insomnia (having difficulty to
fall and stay asleep), obstructive sleep
apnea (breathing disorder that causes
multiple awakening) and narcolepsy
(feeling sleepy most of the time). The
impact of each sleep disorder varies due
to psychiatric diagnosis. Researchers
have long suspected that they might
have the same biological roots as the
overlapping between sleep disorder
and various psychiatric problems are
very visible. The fundamentals of
improving mental health are lifestyle
changes. behavioural strategies and
psychotherapy. There are some cases in
which drugs are necessary to help the
patient to recover. Changes are needed
to improve and it can be done within
the patient’s own capacity. Most people
are aware that caffeine can cause a
person to not feel sleepy, but alcohol
and nicotine give out the same effect.
Nicotine is a stimulant which causes
the heart rate to increase. Giving up
these substances is great but avoiding
them before bedtime is a good solution
as well. Physical activity such as
aerobic also helps. Regular exercising
will help people to fall asleep faster and
helps one to spend more time in deep
sleep. There are other exercises such
as meditation, deep breathing exercises
and progressive muscle relaxation.. he
muscle in our body would be relaxed
and less tense which is good to counter
anxiety. Research has shown that sleep
is heavily connected to mental health.
Having long and enough sleep at night
will help to counter mental health
problems. It is a worrying matter aswe
can never be sure if a person is suffering
from a mental health disorder. There
are a lot of factors that contribute to
mental health. But with the realisation
that mental health is so much more
and the rising number of organisations
trying to help mental health patients, it
is possible that we can help them.
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