Research Digest: Sleep

We may not feel we need research to tell us how important sleep is for our psychological health. Poor sleep is something we will all experience at some point in our lives, whether it be the occasional bad night, as linked to an obvious external factor (such as a new baby), or a chronic difficulty with an emotional and/or physical basis. However, the bi-directional nature of the relationship between sleep and our psychological health can make it a challenge for both the individual and researcher to grapple with, in a classic ‘chicken and egg’ scenario. The unconscious can often play a powerful role here, making sleep problems feel hard for an individual to understand or know how to manage.

Sleep difficulties can often be the impetus for parents of infants and young children seeking support. Unsurprisingly, there is a vast amount of research literature on this topic, with the abstracts in this digest barely scraping the surface. In older children, a difficulty with sleep is unlikely to be the stated reason for a referral to mental health services, and more commonly exists alongside other linked symptoms. Psychologically, difficultly in falling or staying asleep can mean many things at different points in a child’s development. While a parent and infant’s struggle with separation may complicate falling asleep, an adolescent may assert their separateness from parents by disobeying parental wishes in this regard. Anxieties of many types can be felt more strongly at this point in the day, with the unconscious links to death having relevance.

The review begins with the most up to date research on how much sleep is needed during each life stage . While it is acknowledged that this may vary between individuals, a useful baseline is provided. The review is then divided into research that examines sleep in infants and toddlers, latency aged children, and adolescents. While this division is somewhat artificial, it has been made in recognition of the fact that these stages of deve