![]() And because he could only type with one hand, he ended up having to stay up even later to finish his work.Īlong with a lack of sleep goes the ability to exercise self-control - over one’s emotions, impulses and mood. Though he says the injury was “absolutely the result of how little sleep I’d been getting by on for months,” he didn’t get any extensions on homework or papers. “It ended up requiring a trip to the emergency room and two surgeries to repair it, and I spent 6 weeks in a cast,” says Levine, now 19 and a freshman in college. Instead of slicing through a wedge of cheese he sliced through his thumb clear to the bone, severing a ligament. After getting between 3 and 4 hours of sleep for several nights in a row, while working on a term paper in his sophomore year of high school, Gabriel Levine went into his kitchen at 3am to get a snack. Parents shouldn’t let sleep deprived adolescents get behind the wheel anymore than they would if their kid had been drinking.īut while it might pose the most serious risk, driving is not the only danger. One North Carolina state study found that 55% of all “fall-asleep” crashes were caused by drivers under the age of 25. Carskadon says, can negatively affect teenager’s mood, ability to think, to react, to regulate their emotions, to learn and to get along with adults.Īccording to a National Sleep Foundation Study, drowsiness or fatigue is the principle cause of at least 100,000 traffic accidents each year. You don’t realize how bad your vision is until you get glasses or in this case, good sleep.” That haze, Dr. “One of the metaphors I use is that it’s like having an astigmatism. Sleep deprivation puts teenagers into a kind of perpetual cloud or haze, explains Mary Carskadon, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at Brown University and director of chronobiology and sleep research at Bradley Hospital in Rhode Island. With studies showing that 60 to 70% of American teens live with a borderline to severe sleep debt, we need to know how going without their recommended (optimal) nine hours a night affects them. But the physical, mental and behavioral consequences of chronic sleep deprivation are profound, too. We know that the radical changes that occur in adolescence, including tremendous hormonal shifts and significant brain development, affect teenage behavior. What if instead we are doing our teenagers a disservice by writing off as “normal” what are in reality the symptoms of chronic and severe sleep deprivation? It’s a radical thought, but what if the behavior we casually dismiss as “ teenage angst” - the moodiness, the constant battles, the sleeping all day, the reckless, impulsive and careless behavior - is not in fact a normal part of being a teen? Or at least, not to the degree we assume it is. It’s important to talk to teens about getting enough sleep. Physical and behavioral health issues from lack of sleep can have real effects. Sleep deprivation is not a normal part of growing up. In fact, since many mental health disorders first show up in the teen years, doctors worry that sleep deprivation may bring those conditions on or make them worse. ![]() These symptoms make it harder to sleep and it becomes a bad cycle. One study found that teens who don’t sleep enough feel anxious, stressed and depressed. That can work for a little while but is not a long-term solution. Some kids try to make up by sleeping a lot on the weekends. It also results in teens acting impulsively or recklessly. Not getting sleep can cause traffic accidents and accidental injuries. It also has an impact on their ability to control their emotions and get along with adults. ![]() That haze can have negative effects on the way they think, react and learn. Not getting sleep puts teens in a kind of haze. But studies show that close to 70% of teens don’t get that. Teens need nine hours of sleep a night for their developing brains. The physical, mental and behavioral problems that happen when a teen goes without sleep are huge. But actually, there’s a good chance all of these symptoms could be caused by the chronic lack of sleep most teens experience. It’s easy to assume that your teen’s moodiness, recklessness and sleeping all day on the weekends are just annoying teen behavior.
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