Overview
Overview – Sleep-Wake Disorders, Part 1
The Sleep-Wake Disorders group, Part 1, includes multiple disorders. Core features of each disorder relate to the patient’s dissatisfaction regarding the quality, timing, and amount of sleep with resulting daytime distress and impairment. Each sleep-wake disorder is frequently accompanied by anxiety disorders and depressive disorders. Scientists now realize that lack of sleep is a key contributor to mental illness (even sleep-related psychosis). Sleep deprivation itself may be a cause of mental illness, not just a symptom of it. When the human brain is deprived of sleep it can rewire itself to adapt to its sleep-deprived state. A lack of sleep is thought to stimulate the part of the brain most closely linked with depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses.
Sleep is a fundamental human need primarily related to brain function for restoring functioning and vitality, promoting memory consolidation, and maintaining immune function. Estimates are that sleep deprivation is a factor in about 21 percent of car accidents that involve a fatality. Fatigue has been linked with the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, Chernobyl Disaster in northern Ukraine, Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station accident in Pennsylvania, Space shuttle Challenger explosion, and American Airlines Flight 1421 crash, to name a few.
Sleep is independently linked with longevity. Estimates are that the loss of one hour of sleep per night can shorten one’s lifespan. The brain does not rest during sleep, per se. Hundreds of biological processes continue and some brain areas are even more active during sleep than during awake times. The brain is actually busier during sleep than when awake, because it has many housekeeping and repairing chores to do. If sleep is cut short some of those chores will not get done, which can impact the brain’s functional abilities on the following day. Although this does not seem intuitive for many individuals, mental exercise fatigue actually requires more recovery time than does physical exercise fatigue.
Sleep-Wake Disorders, Part 1, presents information on four types of disorders, one type each day for four days. These are:
- Insomnia Disorder
- Hypersomnolence Disorder
- Narcolepsy Disorder
- Circadian Rhythm Sleep Disorder
On the fifth day, the Team reviews each of the four Wake-Sleep Disorders, helping you to fix the information in your memory and to reaffirm the strategies for dealing with each type. Typically, the average person needs to review information three or four times to move it from short-term memory into long-term memory.
