Anxiety rises with less sleep

SLEEPING less than eight hours a night is linked to intrusive and repetitive thoughts like those seen in anxiety and depression, reports a new study.

American researchers have studied the sleep duration of people with moderate to high levels of repetitive negative thinking.

The team exposed the study’s participants to different pictures intended to trigger an emotional response.

Their attention observed through movement.

The researchers found that the participants who slept the least and took the longest time to fall asleep, had greater difficulty in shifting their attention away from negative information.

“While other people may be able to receive negative information and move on, the participants had trouble was eye ignoring it,” noted study author Prof Meredith Coles.

These findings suggest that sleep disruption can affect the cognitive ability required to shift our attention away from negative stimuli.

In the medium to long term, these obsessive negative thoughts can make us more vulnerable to various psychological disorders such as anxiety and depression.

The researchers intend to carry out further studies to work out how sleep cycle duration could be a contributory factor in psychological disorders.

Studying sleep cycles in this way could one day help to create effective strategies for the treatment of anxiety and depression, the study suggests.

The study was published in the Journal of Behaviour Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry. – AFP-Relaxnews