Lack of enough sleep is becoming increasingly commonplace in modern culture.The National Sleep Foundation says that the number of Americans with sleep problems is about 70 million. This problem is no longer confined to the sick and elderly. The most disturbing trend is that young adults are also increasingly affected by this problem. The number of such persons using sleeping pills is supposed to have doubled from 2000 to 2004. Some people tend to believe that they have trained themselves to get along with less sleep and therefore it is OK. This is not correct.It is well established that sleep regenerates various parts of the body, especially the brain. Till now psychological researchers were minimizing the effects of sleep deprivation, treating them as nothing more significant than an inconvenience which makes people feel a bit tired now and then.
This view is incorrect. Recent research suggests that each day with insufficient sleep increases our sleep debt, and when it becomes large enough, noticeable problems appear. When sleep deprivation becomes too large the effects mimic those of psychosis. Researchers at the University of California Berkley and Harvard Medical School have found that sleep deprivation affects our emotional health. "Most people think that when you are sleep deprived, what happens to the brain is that it becomes sleepy and less active," says Matthew Walker, assistant professor of psychology at Berkley. But Walker says that the imaging study published in Current Biology dated 23rd October, found that the brain's emotional centers became "60 percent more reactive." The study also suggests that lack of sleep elevates activity in the emotional centers of the brain most closely associated with psychiatric disorders such as depression. This finding runs contrary to the traditional belief that it is psychiatric disorders which cause poor sleep. The really bad news is that depression and sleep deprivation may operate in mutual reinforcement. That is, if you are depressed you get less sleep which further increases your depression and so the cycle continues.
Unfortunately research in this area is still incomplete. It is likely that just as some areas of the brain can cause emotional imbalance, other areas may help restore emotional stability.This would surely be one of the most significant medical breakthroughs once it is found.