Encouraging healthy sleep can help teens through COVID blues: Study

NEW DELHI: Fostering an environment of better sleeping habits could help reduce stress amongst adolescents and help them cope better during a pandemic, said a study published in the journal Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health. The study explored the relationship between stress during the COVID-19 induced pandemic and the pre-pandemic sleep behaviour of the community. A poor sleep cycle is associated with higher levels of stress. A new study by the Mc Gill University said that the changes in the daily routine brought by the pandemic helped adolescents follow their biological impulses to wake up and sleep later. In other words, it reduced daytime sleepiness. 

Rut Gruber, Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, said that the schools should encourage this by delaying school start time. “This would be supporting the mental health of students,” said Gruber. The aforementioned study discovered that teenagers shifted their wake-up and sleep time by two hours. Gruber explained that shorter sleep duration and a higher level of arousal at bedtime were associated with increased levels of stress and vice versa. A recent shift in teens’ pattern to not get enough sleep was already a global concern before the COVID-19 pandemic.