Without needing any medical expertise, I can tell you without any equivocation that the worse your mood, the less likely you are to sleep well.
How Does Your Mood Affect Your Sleep?
If you are in an angry mood shortly before bedtime, you will not sleep well. If you are in a depressed mood shortly before bedtime, you are unlikely to sleep well. If you are in an anxious mood shortly before bedtime, you are unlikely to sleep well.
Women, Mood, and Sleep
A journal published by Elena Toffol, Nea Kalleinen, Anna Sofia Urrila, Sari-Leena Himanen, Tarja Porkka-Heiskanen, Timo Partonen, and Päivi Polo-Kantola on BioMed Central deals with this matter quite comprehensively.
The reality is that the relationship between mood and sleep is not as clearly defined as we would like it to be. We all know how we feel before we sleep or don’t sleep. However, we don’t really understand how that relationship between mood and sleep actually works.
These medical professionals have sought to clarify that for us. As is often the case, when examining sleep subjects, it is prudent to conduct studies on various age groupings. The point is that sleep behavior changes and varies the older you get.
For example, those women who fall into the (20–26 years) bracket are likely to sleep better, longer and more efficiently than their older counterparts, regardless of the circumstances.
The older you get (male or female) the more likely your sleep is to deteriorate. Because of that, the interaction between mood and sleep will also likely change with age. To understand that relationship, you need to isolate the cases into the 20-26 years bracket, the (43–51 years) bracket, and the (58–71 years) bracket.
Of particular interest to us is what the experts called the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), which assesses the relationship between mood and sleep. They also reveal that the depressive symptoms are more common in women than they are in men, which probably means that mood affects the sleep of women – regardless of the age bracket – more than it would do for men.
Now, we have all been through this at some stage in our lives, regardless of whether we are men or women. If you are young and you show depressive symptoms the chances are that you will sleep rather excessively. In other words, you will likely have what they call hypersomnia. A glaring unwillingness to get out of bed.
Those teenagers and young adults who sleep for extended periods, for no apparent reason, are probably in a very foul mood. They are probably depressed and somebody should have that checked out.
Those who fall into the older age bracket are likely to experience the exact opposite effects. They will likely encounter greater bouts of insomnia. In other words, they will likely sleep less and are likely to have their sleep disrupted considerably easier and quicker.
The real danger presented here is the prospect of that cycle not being broken. So, that is to say, that the more insomnia or even hypersomnia you encounter, the greater the prospects of your mood actually deteriorating.
An adjustment needs to be made to your sleep patterns before you can adequately address your mood.
Mood Affects Sleep but Sleep Also Affects Mood
One State Government in Victoria Australia realizes the significance of the relationship between mood and sleep and has also sought to intervene in a meaningful way that helps Australians better manage the sleep patterns that emerge from this.
For much of this blog post, we have looked at the impact that mood has on the quality of sleep that you have. However, there is also the opposite to consider and that is the impact which poor quality sleep has on the mood.
Working in partnership with the Better Health Channel, the Victorian government has made it clear that all it takes is one bad night’s sleep to make you feel awful the next day. If you do not sleep well, for whatever reason, you will likely be grumpy the next day.
You will also likely be more irritable the next day.
Under those circumstances, it then becomes exceedingly difficult to concentrate as you are less alert than you would ordinarily be. As a consequence of that, your academic or even work performance will then suffer.
There are few things in life more frustrating than not being able to deliver on your work mandate. More often than not, your mood will sink when your boss calls you out for failing to adequately deliver on a work assignment.
In addition to that, your mood will sink when you receive average grades in your examinations because you did not get enough sleep. And so the cycle continues.
We cannot stress this enough but at the heart of so many of your personal problems is often the inability to secure enough sleep.
If you sleep better, the prospects of your mood being better to improve significantly.
Monika Konjarski, Greg Murray, V Vien Lee, and Melinda L.Jackson recently conducted a study on the relationship between daily sleep and mood. Among their key findings was that the relationship between regular daily sleep and your mood was extremely intimate.
One cannot go without the other. They determined that sleep quality is one thing (an important thing at that) but added that sleep latency and sleep duration were factors just as important when trying to prevent psychological and mood disorders.
The American Sleep Disorders Association and Sleep Research Society have also researched this topic at considerable length, in a paper, they published last century already. We have already determined that more and a better quality of sleep have a positive impact on your mood.
What we have not thrashed out in considerable detail yet – and this is what the study does – is that earlier sleep is also associated with a better mood. In fact, these scientists say that earlier sleep is actually a better predictor of subsequent mood than sleep duration itself.
In one of their studies, 375 psychiatric patients were evaluated. In most of those cases, it was established that patients sleeping later and for shorter periods encounter greater difficulty with mood swings.
Final Thoughts
When upset, angry, depressed and any number of other moods we know we do not sleep well and the professionals have pretty much confirmed. Unfortunately for females, these moods appear to affect our sleep and disrupt our sleep more as we age.
If you find that you are regularly suffering from the loss of sleep due to your moods I would suggest that addressing the reason or reasons why you could be feeling this way could help you achieve a longer better night of sleep.
Changing daily habits to achieve better sleep is one way we can all try without drugs or medical intervention – see my article here. Also, a sleep hygiene checklist to help you reach your goals – here.
If you need assistance with your moods and sleep habits I would strongly suggest visiting a medical practitioner.
As always here’s to better sleep!
