Sad and Sleepy

A study was conducted on 262 high school students. It was found that the average high schooler gets 6 hours of sleep on week days and 8 hours on weekends. It's no wonder that half of the students in the study were "excessively sleepy." It was also found that 30% of those teens had strong depression symptoms and 32% had some symptoms of depressions. And on top of that, the sleepiest studients were 3 times more likely to also have depression symptoms.

It is not clear whether sleep deprivation is a deciding factor in depression or if depression causes sleep deprivation. And the study was only done on one high school so there is not enough evidence to prove either theory. Also, another cause of sleep deprivation is high stress. This can come from too many activities plus homework, and keeping in contact with friends all of the time using cell phones, facebook, etc.

I think that it is possible that sleep deprivation and depression are not connected at all. There is not enough studying done on the issue to really know for sure if those two occurances have anything to do with each other.

Furthermore, it could be those specific students in that specific high school that seem sleepy and depressed. It may not be the trend of teenagers everywhere to be depressed and sleepy. The only way to find this out is if more studies are conducted in other high schools. Studies could also be done on adults too. There could be a connection between sleep deprivation and depression in them as well.

However, studies may not be necessary at all. Maybe we could just sit down and think about it. I almost think that neither one (sleep deprivation or depression) is the cause of the other. I think maybe the root is somewhere else. High stress could be the cause of both sleep deprivation and depression. Maybe instead of forcing teenagers to get more sleep and giving them happy pills, parents and teachers should do their best to bring the stress levels of teenagers down a notch or too. Colleges could lower their acceptance standards and not expect kids to be A students as well as football players or student council members. Parents could stop putting so much pressure on their kids to succede in life and also monitor how much cell phone and computer time their teenager is allowed every night. Parents could make sure that their teens go to bed on time as well as ensure that the thoughts of the day do not keep them up at night. And teachers could work harder on helping kids succede without breaking them.

Then maybe high schoolers would sleep more and be less depressed. And we wouldn't have to conduct studies of their behavior to understand how to fix an outcome of stress and pressure.

Article Source:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/06/09/sleep.deprivation.depression/index.html?eref=rss_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+Top+Stories%29

Picture Source:

http://neuronarrative.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/when-its-learn-or-lose-sleep-on-it/