This is why May being a month about mental health and sleep is interesting.  The two are interconnected.  A decline in one causes a decline in the other.  For example:

A person who suffers from anxiety may find this mental illness to be worse at night.  This results in them having panic attacks at night or, at the very least, mediocre sleep.  They will eventually hit a point of sleep deprivation, which causes them to become lethargic and more anxious.  Daily activities become more difficult and you get stressed out over how hard things are.  This makes your sleep worse and can lead to insomnia, which enhances both situations.

Yet, a person who gets enough sleep has the energy to get enough things done that they don’t stress out as much.  Their anxiety is kept at healthy or maybe tolerable levels, so sleep isn’t hindered.  Even if a few blips of bad days happen, the overall stress doesn’t reach a point where a downward spiral occurs.

Another result of poor sleep that can affect mental health is something I learned about when reading about sleep apnea.  To put it bluntly, it can cause brain damage.  Gray matter is reduced and can result in reduced cognition.  The hippocampus is damaged enough to cause memory loss.  You have less white matter and the blood-brain barrier is weakened.  This all causes a rise in mental health issues stemming from an attention deficit and general comprehension problems.

So, what do other people think about the connection between sleep and mental health?  Does it seem obvious?  If so, why do you think we don’t really pay attention to the connection and push ourselves to forego sleep at times?