IS THERE REALLY AN EPIDEMIC OF INSOMNIA?

SOME sleep researchers question the very idea of an insomnia ‘epidemic’. According to Michael Grandner, director of the Sleep and Health Research Programme at the University of Arizona, there has been a decrease in sleep time over the past generation — of around 15 minutes!

And when a team of Australian researchers from the University of Sydney reviewed research conducted all around the world from the 1960s to the 2000s, they found in most countries, the average amount of sleep per night had increased in that time period. These findings, they claim, “turns the current concept of an increasingly ‘sleep-deprived society’ on its head”.

But something has most certainly changed in the last 30 years or so, and that is the way we view bad sleep, how we report it, and how we label it.

According to a paper in American Journal of Public Health, researchers from The University of North Carolina found that prior to 2006, a person suffering with poor sleep was often deemed to be suffering with a mental illness. Today, we view poor sleep as a medical condition in its own right and have given the sleep-deprived their own label: insomniacs.

This ‘medicalisation’ of insomnia concerns me. I have noticed the way complaining about poor sleep and labelling yourself an ‘insomniac’, can transform a perfectly normal little run of poor sleep into a serious problem.

I often infuriate people by suggesting ‘there is no such thing as insomnia’. This may sound like victim-blaming or denial. But, I’m not suggesting no one ever suffers with lack of sleep. I just think it’s unhelpful to view this as a clearly defined disease. If you can see poor sleep as natural, normal and something that happens to everyone from time to time, you’ ll find it easier to begin sleeping well again. Those convictions are now supported by hard science. Kenneth Lichstein of the University of Alabama found those who are convinced they are ‘insomniacs’ are at greater risk for suicidal ideation, anxiety, fatigue and suffered more in the daytime, whether or not they actually slept any worse. In fact, Lichstein found little or no correlation between judging yourself an insomniac and actual poor sleep.

Those with a strong insomniac identity were also less likely to respond to treatment and were more likely to relapse, while those who got poor sleep and didn’t complain, fared better. The implication is that considering yourself ‘an insomniac’ and complaining about sleep may do more harm than lack of sleep itself.

So it’s not poor sleep that’s the problem of itself. It’s thinking you have a problem that’s the problem. This, claims Lichstein, is the ‘cost to pathologising sleep’.

In a somewhat similar vein, in a famous study from 2012, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison considered the effects of stress in 28,000 people. Astonishingly, they found no link between high stress itself and incidence of serious illness except in those who believed stress was harmful. These people had a 43pc increase in risk of premature death. It’s not stress that kills you. It’s thinking stress is going to kill you that kills you.

It’s clear the effects of stress and poor sleep are made far worse by thinking you have a serious problem. In light of this, perhaps it’s time to rethink our reporting of this issue, and consider the effect it is having on our health.

On the one hand, we are telling people if they don’t get eight hours of unbroken sleep every night, they are going to suffer cancer, dementia and an early death. But telling people ‘get more sleep or you’ll die’ is hardly conducive to dropping off, particularly if you’re already suffering from insomnia. It’s like saying to a depressed person, ‘cheer up or you’ll have a nervous breakdown’.

Just by talking of an insomnia ‘epidemic’, might we be making the problem worse?