Friday, September 03, 2010

Sleepless teenagers store up mental-health problems

On average - and what a blissful prospect this sounds - young people between the ages of 17 and 24 sleep between eight and nine hours a night. However, as more youngsters stay awake using the internet, playing computer games and fiddling with gadgets they are getting less sleep - something which could have profound implications for their mental health. Researchers from the George Institute for Global Health in Sydney looked at the sleeping habits of nearly 20,000 people aged between 17 and 24. They found that over half of those who got fewer than six hours sleep had high levels of psychological distress - more than double the rate of people who got eight or nine hours of sleep.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the link in the title of this post.

2 comments:

angcoreydamien said...

I am a general practitioner practicing in Singapore. We do see similar rates of sleep deprivation among our population here. Based on a study done a few years ago, young professionals slept an average of 6.6 hours nightly. Interestingly, only 26 percent felt that they were sleep deprived!

Dr Ang C.D.
http://singaporedoc.com

John Gale said...

Yes, that is interesting. I think I would feel sleep deprived on that amount of sleep over a long time period!
Best Wishes,
John Gale,
Mental Health Update