Everyone knows that we need sleep. If we do not get enough sleep, we also know that it can have a variety of negative consequences. The same may be said of getting too much sleep. I suppose that. Too much, or too little, of anything can have consequences.

One word for too little sleep is insomnia, while one word for too much sleep is hypersomnia. Either one can strongly impact your mood. What is mood? One mood analogy is that feelings like anxiety and depression are like the current weather. Mood is more like the climate. Mood is what psychologists call an affective state. Mood lasts a long time, is pervasive, and will impact how you think, how you see the world around you, and how you act. Feelings generally are triggered by something. Mood does not have to have a particular trigger; it just lingers, but it will impact your thoughts, your feelings, and your actions. Bad moods that have negative consequences are called Mood Disorders. Common mood disorders are bipolar disorder, dysthymia, seasonal affective disorder, major depression, etc. They can be very intense and spoil your quality of life.

It turns out that sleep is an important factor in mood in general, and mood disorders in particular. Psychologists know that for both adults and teens, problematic sleep is a risk factor for a variety of problems. Problematic sleep can prolong or trigger episodes of depression. It can negatively impact health, cognitive functioning, the ability to regulate your emotions, drug use (street and prescribed), and may contribute to thoughts of self-harm and suicide. Studies into how sleep contributes to disordered moods like depression have results that are all over the place. For example, 60 to 80 percent of people with significant depression have disordered sleep. They complain of difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep. On top of that, they may wake up way too early in the morning and not be able to fall back to sleep.

Studies of depressed people who sleep too long (hypersomnia) range from about nine percent to around seventy-five percent. It is believed that possibly half of older adults who have been depressed will continue to have sleep issues even after they are no longer depressed. What can you do if sleep is a factor in your mood issues? There are medical, chiropractic, and psychological technologies available. You can try one or the other, or each. Whatever works for you. Your medical provider and chiropractor have a range of tools to help you. What might a psychologist do? The majority of people that I have worked with tell me that their thoughts will not let them sleep. Thought-stopping techniques are useful, simple to do, and can be quite effective. Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) can also be effective, particularly when focused simultaneously on both depression and insomnia. CBT-I is a broader integrative technique that can have a big impact. Light Therapy can also be used. Light therapy has already been successful in the treatment of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Basically, the focus in light therapy is using time periods, during which you are exposed to specific lights, to help regulate your internal body clock, which then allows you to tell your brain when to feel sleepy and when to be awake. Both darkness and bright light approaches have been utilized.

Finally, Sleep Deprivation has also proven effective because researchers have learned that depression symptoms may return quickly during sleep. This is a great time to be alive. There are people all over the world studying and researching just about every kind of human affliction, and finding ways to help. When what they have learned is shared with everyone, everyone may have a chance to benefit. Learning how a person’s sleep can impact their mood is just one small example.