Sleep and mental health
We all need sleep. It's an important part of our lives. But many of us have problems with it. And sleep problems can affect us for lots of reasons.
Struggling with sleep can be difficult to cope with. But you're not alone and there are things you can do to improve your sleep.
This page explains how sleep is linked to mental health and how poor sleep can affect you.
How to manage and improve your sleep
Are you looking for practical tips and ideas to help improve your sleep?
Why is sleep important?
Sleep is important for both our physical and mental wellbeing. It helps our brains and bodies work at their best. And this can help us function day to day. Sleep can also help us process our emotions, thoughts and memories.
If we sleep badly, we might feel worse and struggle with our mental wellbeing. If we're struggling with how we're feeling, this can affect our sleep too. Like if we've experienced trauma.
Common myths and ideas about sleep
You might've heard lots of different ideas about how to sleep well. But good sleep can mean something different for everyone.
Let's look at some common ideas you might've heard about sleep. As well as some myths about sleep that we'll help to break down for you.
Just as it's normal for things in life to change, it's normal for our sleep to change too. For example, during puberty, bright light in the evening can make it especially hard for us to fall asleep.
During different times in your life, you might find that you:
- Find it harder to fall asleep
- Prefer to stay awake later at night and get up later in the day
- Have different sleep patterns to people older than you
- Sleep less than you did when you were younger
Lots of us experience changes to our sleep and sleep difficulties, but things can get better. For more information, see our tips to help with your sleep.
We need different amounts of sleep depending on our age and what's going on for us. It's OK if we have a few nights where we don't sleep as well as we'd like to.
As a young person, we might need more sleep than people older than us. This is partly because our bodies and brains are growing and changing a lot.
A typical amount of sleep for a young person is between 7 and 11 hours each night. But if we're aged from 11 to 13, we might sleep up to 12 hours each night. You can find more information about sleep patterns on the Teen Sleep Hub.
If you're regularly sleeping for less than 7 hours, or more than 12 hours, you could look at our tips to improve your sleep. If you feel like you're getting enough sleep, but feel tired during the day, speak to your GP.
The amount of sleep you get is important. But there are other things might affect your sleep quality. This includes things like:
- What time you go to bed
- Having a regular sleep pattern
- How often you wake up during sleep
- How refreshed you feel when you wake up
- How quickly you fall asleep
- How well you think you slept
Lots of research says that sleep is important for our mental and physical health. But all of these things are connected, and might affect each other. Sometimes, it can feel hard to separate them all out.
If we're struggling with sleep, it might affect our life and health in lots of different ways.
But we might also experience difficult things in our lives, which can also affect our sleep. Like exam stress, mental health problems or physical health problems.
We might find it helps our health when we try to improve our sleep. But we might struggle with our sleep because of things that feel out of our control. To help with this, we can try different ways of looking after our wellbeing.
Sleeping is something our brain and body is built to do. We don't need to learn how to sleep – we've been able to sleep since before we were born. And almost all animals sleep without having to learn to.
But sometimes we might find it harder or easier to get to sleep. If we try to force ourselves to fall asleep before we're ready, that might make it worse.
Having a good sleep routine can help to teach our brain and body to get ready for sleep. This can help us fall asleep more easily and stay asleep. We have some tips you can try to help improve your sleep.
At sleepovers, all of my friends would happily fall asleep and I would sit in bed sadly, knowing that I would be awake and alone for hours.
Why might I struggle with sleep?
There are lots of reasons we might struggle with sleep. We might experience 1 of these reasons or lots of different things. We might find links between the reasons why we might struggle with sleep.
For example, some of the following things might affect our sleep:
- Struggling with mental health or our feelings. We might also be living with a mental health problem.
- Experiencing problems in our life or relationships. Like a break-up, losing someone we love or arguments with people close to us.
- Experiencing problems at school or work. We might be coping with exam stress or moving to a new school. We might have to stay up late or wake up early for school or work, which can be hard to adjust to.
- Changes in our surroundings or our daily routine. Like during the change in seasons. When it gets lighter in the summer, we might find it harder to get to sleep. When it's darker in the winter, we might feel more tired during the day, or find it harder to wake up.
- Struggling with where we sleep. Like living somewhere noisy or in a space that's too bright. Some of us also sleep in the same bed or room as someone else, or we might be spending time in hospital. In some cases, we might not feel safe where we live, or not have a place to live.
- Not having control over our sleep. Like not being able to control the time we go to sleep or wake up. For example, because the people we live with have rules for going to bed. Our work or school hours, or the work hours of someone we live with, could also affect this.
- Being a young carer. We might look after a relative or help with younger siblings. This can mean we have a lot of responsibilities, so we might not get as much sleep as we need.
- Going through a traumatic experience. Like if we've experienced abuse or violence, or we're going through this at the moment. We might have more nightmares, or find it harder to relax and fall asleep at night.
- Other temporary changes to our sleep. We might change our routine for religious or cultural reasons, like fasting and waking up for Suhur during Ramadan. Clock changes or travelling to different time zones can also disrupt our sleep.
If you're neurodivergent, like if you're autistic or have ADHD, you might find it difficult to fall or stay asleep. You might be more likely to feel restless, which can keep you awake. But it might help to try some of our tips to help you sleep.
How is sleep linked to mental health?
If we're struggling with our mental health, this can affect how well we sleep. And if we're sleeping badly, this can affect our mental health.
Sometimes we might not see a clear link, as our sleep and mental health can affect each other.
For example, if we're experiencing depression, we might sleep more than usual but still feel tired. Or if we're feeling anxious, our worries might affect our sleep.
And if we don't sleep well, we might find it harder and harder to cope with difficult thoughts and feelings as time goes on.
My sleep problems are linked to ADHD. But I didn't realise this until recently, despite struggling with insomnia from a young age.
How can poor sleep affect me?
If we experience poor sleep, it can affect us in lots of negative ways. Especially if we struggle with sleep over a long time.
We might find that we:
- Find it harder to manage our emotions, like feeling more angry or less motivated than usual
- Have poor mental wellbeing or find it harder to cope with mental health problems
- Feel physically unwell, like having headaches or other pain
- Have no energy, feel tired or not well-rested, even if we feel like we've slept ‘enough’
- Find it harder to concentrate or do things we normally enjoy
- Struggle with friendships and relationships, like arguing more often or spending less time socialising
- Use alcohol or drugs to cope, or use these more often than we would normally
My biggest tip would have to be don't be too hard on yourself. It's really common to struggle with your sleep, but there are lots of great tips out there to help you.
My mental health has a big impact on my sleep. Sometimes, if my head is cluttered with events going on in my life, my brain cannot shut off and I get little sleep.
Types of sleep problems and experiences
Sometimes, struggling with our sleep is part of a wider sleep problem. Or it might become a sleep problem over time.
If we experience a sleep problem, we might:
- Find it hard to fall asleep
- Find it hard to stay asleep, like waking up throughout the night or earlier than we want to
- Have specific things that disturb our sleep, like nightmares or memories
- Find it hard to wake up, get out of bed or stay awake during the day
- Not get enough sleep, like going to sleep late and waking up early
- Sleep so much that it affects our daily life, like oversleeping on weekends or napping a lot
- Have irregular sleep, like falling asleep or waking up at different times without any routine
But there are lots of specific types of sleep problems that you might've heard of, or experienced.
Insomnia is when we regularly struggle to fall asleep or stay asleep. Lots of us experience insomnia. But it can be disruptive and affect our day-to-day life.
For ideas to help you fall asleep or get back to sleep when you wake up, go to our tips for sleeping better.
Nightmares are upsetting dreams that sometimes wake us up or affect our sleep. Sometimes we can remember them, which can make us feel afraid or anxious even after waking up. For some of us, nightmares might relate to our experiences of trauma.
Night terrors are sometimes called ‘sleep terrors’. We might talk, scream, shout or sit up while sleeping. We might also move about in our sleep. Like sleepwalking, standing, running or thrashing around. To other people, we might appear awake and afraid, but we're still asleep.
We're likely to feel confused when we wake up, but unlikely to remember the night terror.
In sleep paralysis, we might feel like we can't move or speak when we wake up, or while falling asleep.
Some of us might also feel like there's something threatening nearby, or a pressure on our chest like something is holding us down. Or we might feel like we're floating out of our bodies.
We might see and hear unusual things while experiencing sleep paralysis.
Lots of cultures have different beliefs about sleep paralysis. These beliefs might make us feel fearful when we experience it, or could make us feel reassured. It can depend on what we believe.
Bruxism is also called ‘grinding teeth’. It means that we clench, grind or move our jaw when we're asleep. This can lead to headaches, aches in our jaw muscles and worn-down teeth.
We might do it more when we're feeling anxious or stressed. We also might not be aware that we're doing it.
Trauma and sleep problems
A lot of sleep problems can relate to something traumatic that we've experienced. These experiences can lead to trauma, which can really affect our lives.
We have more information about trauma, plus tips to help you cope.
Many sleep problems and experiences can get better with time. If you feel like it's affecting your day-to-day life then it might help to speak to a doctor.
It's up to you when you speak to your doctor. But you don't have to wait until things get worse to ask for help.
Where to get tips for improving your sleep
Our tips page offers lots of ideas to help improve your sleep. We have tips you can try now and in the longer term.
Published: July 2026
Next review planned: July 2029
We spoke to young people who agreed to give quotes for this page. Their experiences are not related to the people shown in the photos.
References are available on request. If you want to reproduce this content, see our permissions and licensing page.
