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Poor sleep is impacting the nations health and happiness

UK charity reveals that individuals with insomnia are likely to experience higher rates of relationship problems, energy deficiency and depressed mood among other health and wellbeing issues.

The Mental Health Foundation recently published a report detailing the impact of sleep on health and well-being to coincide with the launch of their new campaign to raise awareness of the importance of sleep for both mental and physical health.

Key findings from the Sleep Matters report included the following:

Over 30% of the population currently suffer from insomnia or another sleep disorder. Those who do have insomnia are:

  • Four times as likely to have relationship problems (reported amongst 55% of survey respondents with mild, moderate or severe insomnia, compared to 13% of respondents who slept well)
  • Three times as likely to experience low mood (83% compared to 27%)
  • Three times as likely to lack concentration during the day (78% compared to 26%)
  • Three times as likely to struggle to ‘get things done’ at work or elsewhere in their lives (68% compared to 23%)
  • Over twice as likely to suffer from energy deficiency (94% compared to 42%)

    • Senior Researcher at the Mental Health Foundation and lead author of Sleep Matters, Dr Dan Robotham has stressed that those who find themselves experiencing insomnia can soon develop a downward spiral of sleeplessness and ill-health. This is why it is essential that the public be made more aware of effective ways of improving the quality of their sleep and employers, schools and public health bodies also need to know how to identify and support people with sleep disorders.

    The report has made recommendations which including an increase of local and national health campaigns to raise awareness in schools and workplaces and extra training for GPs regarding evidence based sleep therapies suchas Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).

    View the original article here

    This entry was posted on Monday, February 14th, 2011 at 11:54 am and is filed under Government, Mental Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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