How Depression Affects Your Sleep

If you struggle with depression and haven’t been sleeping well and you just don’t ever feel rested, you’re not alone. Most people who have depression have poor sleep habits. Here’s how they’re connected.

Depression is a mental health disorder that can severely affect those with it in many ways. It can cause symptoms like hopelessness, sadness, worry, trouble focusing, and low energy. In addition, it can affect your sleep.

Sleep and depression are intricately linked: 16 million people in the United States struggle with depression, and of those 16 million, 75% have some sort of sleep disorder.

Ashley Johnson, DO, and our team at Colorado Recovery Solutions explains how depression affects your sleep and how to treat it.

The connection between depression and sleep

Unfortunately, depression and sleep affect each other in a vicious cycle. If you struggle with sleep, it can make you ten times more likely to develop depression, and if you have depression, it can put you at a much higher risk for poor sleeping habits.

These are some of the common sleep disorders associated with depression:

Insomnia: This occurs when you have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep

Hypersomnia: You might have this disorder if you have trouble staying awake during the day and constantly feel the urge to sleep

Obstructive sleep apnea: This disorder causes you to wake up repeatedly from heavy snoring that cuts off your breathing

Insomnia is the most common sleep disorder for those struggling with depression, followed by obstructive sleep apnea and hypersomnia.

No matter which sleep disorder you struggle with, it can often reduce your quality of life and make you groggy and grouchy.

Treat depression to treat your sleep

The good news is that treating depression helps improve your sleep. However, if you’re currently using treatments like medication and therapy and haven’t noticed a difference in your sleep habits, you may need to look into some more options.

The following treatments have improved depression symptoms that have been resistant to other methods you may have already tried:

Ketamine

Ketamine is an anesthetic that has recently proven to be highly successful at treating treatment-resistant depression. It helps to restore neurotransmitters in your brain that control mood and memory. Typically, you get ketamine administered intravenously.

Spravato®

Spravato is a nasal spray that contains esketamine, which is very similar to ketamine. It works to treat extreme depression and can limit depression symptoms within hours of use.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

TMS therapy works to restore certain parts of your brain that become dormant when you have depression, typically the areas that control mood. This process is done by “waking up” your brain cells through an electromagnetic coil placed on your head for stimulation.

In theory, by improving your depression, your sleep should significantly improve as a result.

To learn more about how to treat your sleep and your depression, call our team or request an appointment online today at Colorado Recovery Solutions located in Colorado Springs, Colorado.