It’s said that you spend about one-third of your life sleeping, which makes sense because if you sleep eight hours a night, that’s one-third of your day. In reality, we all have different sleep patterns. Some of us require more sleep and some of us just have a hard time sleeping altogether. A lack of sleep can cause issues with things like concentration, irritability, and decision-making, but how can sleep affect student athlete mental health?
The results of a recent study looked at the relationship between insufficient sleep and mental health symptoms in collegiate student athletes and non-athletes. It’s long been recognized that a lack of sleep or poor quality sleep can impact one’s mental health. However, this study sought to examine the affects on athletes vs. non-athletes.
There were two basic points of assessment:
What the study found was that both athletes and non-athletes experienced similar mental health symptoms (as described above) when they felt they received insufficient sleep.
While the results are not surprising, what it does reiterate is that qualify of sleep often affects mental wellness and that athletes are not immune to these issues.
In an article on sleep disorders on ncaa.org, the author noted that the average American adult reports about two nights of insufficient sleep per week compared to student-athlete reports of four nights of insufficient sleep per week (American College Health Association). Furthermore, “an NCAA study showed that one-third of student-athletes get fewer than seven hours of sleep per night, with greater values among women.”
Think for a moment about the average student athlete’s life. They have a full-time class schedule, coursework, sports practice (sometimes multiple times a day), physical training (again, sometimes multiple times a day), team travel, plus sometimes stress such as financial strains, family relationships, future plans, and a social life to maintain. And that’s really just the start. Not only are their schedules packed and demanding, their bodies are often depleted, and their minds are often overloaded.
While we can’t change their schedules or their responsibilities, what we can do is offer a support system.
Here’s what that might look like:
Just because student athletes are young, that doesn’t mean that they need less sleep or are exempt from the mental health effects of poor sleep. Keep in mind that the chemistry of each of our bodies is different, and this includes the brain. To improve athlete mental health, we have to treat the individual holistically looking at all of the varying factors at play in the person’s life as objectively as possible and this includes getting enough ZZZ’s.
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