Sleep proves to be vital link in teen happiness
Sophomore Grace Burgess poses to illustrate how students sleep during class due to staying up late.
September 25, 2009 • written by Laura Sledge
Filed under Features
Teenagers rarely stop moving. There is always something to do, somewhere to go, or someone to talk to. It seems, also, that teens tend to grow more active and awake at night, when they should be sleeping.
A flaw, however, lies in this process.
Being healthy requires a certain amount of sleep, and according to a recent study presented at the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies in 2009, teens who do not get enough sleep have higher depression rates and suicidal tendencies.
Prevention counselor Shanika Moore agrees that the brain and the body have to work together. “If you don’t get the proper rest that you need, you can have problems,” she said.
The study conducted by James Gangwisch of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University showed that 7.3 percent of the teens in the study were depressed, and 13 percent had suicidal thoughts. The students with an early bedtime set by their parents were 25 percent less likely to suffer from depression than those who did not.
“Studies have found that adolescents do not go to bed early enough to compensate for earlier school start times,” Gangwisch said, “and transitions to earlier school start times have been shown to be associated with significant sleep deprivation.”
According to sleep researchers Mary Carskadon of Brown University, and Bill Dement of Stanford, teens suffer from a loss of sleep due to too much activity in and out of school, and because of their natural sleep cycles. The biological clock of a normal teenager compels him or her to stay up late and sleep late. Students usually stay up later, but are not able to sleep later because school starts at such an early hour of the morning.
“Some nights I only get three or four hours of sleep because I stay up so late doing homework,” senior Kristina Sarten said. “The next day I’m always tired and irritable, and have a difficult time concentrating.”
Students who stay up late are not only unpleasant to be around, but they may also end up missing out on important things in school.
“They are very irritable and jittery. They get to class, they sleep, and they can’t function,” Moore said. “Their attention span is off.”
Because the loss of sleep can have such adverse effects on students, many sleep researchers including Carskadon and Dement, are pushing for later start times for high school students, and earlier school start times for elementary and middle schoolers, to help solve the problem.
Some, however, may believe teens can fix the issue by better managing their time..
“With new technological advances, students are Facebooking and MySpacing at all hours of the night,” Moore said. “[They have] too much idle time, and are not using their time wisely.”
Any student who feels depressed can talk to counselors, such as Moore and guidance counselors for each grade, who are available and willing to talk. Together they can choose a plan of action to help alleviate symptoms of depression, whether it is through simply talking or formulating a plan to alter daily habits, such as something as simple as sleeping an extra hour at night.
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I would think a good remedy for the lack of sleep is better time management. If teens had a clear plan about what their day is going to be like, they wouldn’t have to put under the pressure of doing a assignment late at night and carrying on that lack of sleep into their school day.
sleep is good. get more sleep
zzzzzzzzzzz
everyone you need your rest
come on people if u need ur rest wait till the weekend like friday go to sleep early and sleep in as late as u can on saturday that way ull catch up on ur sleep