{"id":47112,"date":"2019-03-07T10:24:39","date_gmt":"2019-03-07T18:24:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=47112"},"modified":"2019-03-07T10:24:39","modified_gmt":"2019-03-07T18:24:39","slug":"majority-of-university-students-report-poor-quality-sleep-putting-them-at-higher-risk-of-mental-health-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/majority-of-university-students-report-poor-quality-sleep-putting-them-at-higher-risk-of-mental-health-problems\/","title":{"rendered":"Majority of university students report poor quality sleep, putting them at higher risk of mental health problems"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nIf you went to university \u2013 or are still there \u2013 think about your sleep while there. Would you say you ticked all the boxes for healthy sleep \u2013 going to bed at a reasonable hour and waking up at the same time every day, sleeping for around eight hours, and avoiding sleeping in or napping during the day?<\/p>\n

If your sleep was or is pretty poor at university, you\u2019re not alone. In fact, up to\u00a060% of university students<\/a>\u00a0report poor quality sleep. This includes sleep that is not restorative and difficulties falling or staying asleep. This is a problem because a good night\u2019s sleep is critical for well-being and productivity.<\/p>\n

Sleep affects your ability to learn and process new information so students with poor sleep quality are more likely to get bad grades.\u00a0Poor sleep quality<\/a>\u00a0also puts students at a heightened risk of\u00a0developing mental health problems<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sleep at university is especially important because most undergraduates (those aged 18 to 21) are still in adolescence. This is the period of life between childhood and adulthood marked by massive biological and social changes, which is now considered to last\u00a0until around the age of 24<\/a>. Because it is such an important stage of development, healthy sleep is vital at this time.<\/p>\n

To date,\u00a0research<\/a>\u00a0exploring the causes of sleep problems in undergraduate students hasn\u2019t considered the fact that this population is sleeping in a distinctive environment, especially when staying in halls in their first year. In halls, students sleep in close proximity to their peers, and at the beginning of the year at least, those peers are strangers. This is really unusual. Unless they go to boarding school or are in the army, most adolescents don\u2019t sleep so near to their friends, and it\u2019s not clear what affect this might be having on students\u2019 sleep.<\/p>\n

How flatmates affect sleep<\/strong><\/h4>\n

I conducted a\u00a0research study<\/a>\u00a0to try and understand what role this social environment might be playing on students\u2019 sleep habits. To do this, I interviewed 15 first year students who lived on campus at a UK university.<\/p>\n

All participants had poor quality sleep \u2013 I specifically advertised for people who had difficulty falling or staying asleep, and checked that they met the threshold for \u201cpoor quality sleep\u201d using an established questionnaire. I asked them about their experience of living in halls, and how they felt different factors \u2013 like friends and academic work \u2013 might be affecting their sleep.<\/p>\n

A key factor that emerged in my study was how much living alongside other students was affecting participants\u2019 sleep quality. First, other students disrupted sleep by making a lot of noise. Participants said that their fellow flatmates kept them up late at night by playing loud music, partying, shouting, running down corridors and slamming doors.<\/p>\n

Students often felt unable to stop this barrage of noise. Students can call security if there is excessive noise after 11pm, but many did not take advantage of this, because they felt uncomfortable about stopping other people\u2019s fun or telling on their fellow students. Other participants said that asking people directly to be quiet wasn\u2019t an option either, because it was too intimidating \u2013 or because they didn\u2019t trust people would listen to them.<\/p>\n

Fun now, sleep later<\/strong><\/h4>\n

But flatmates didn\u2019t just disrupt sleep by making noise, they also affected students\u2019 sleep quality by providing an easy opportunity to socialise. Many participants in the study reported knowing that socialising with their flatmates at night (either going out to pubs and bars or staying up late in their flat) was bad for their sleep, but said that they consciously chose to sacrifice sleep in order to have fun with their friends.<\/p>\n

Together, the interviews suggest that social factors \u2013 other students \u2013 may be a key contributor to sleep problems on campus. This makes a lot of sense when we remember that undergraduate students are still adolescents, and that a key task in adolescence is to fit in, be accepted and\u00a0establish relationships with peers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This study didn\u2019t test the relationship between social factors and sleep directly; these were just the participants\u2019 perceptions of how these factors affected their sleep. So future studies need to be conducted to assess, with more certainty, the extent to which social factors cause poor sleep quality in adolescence. For now, this study highlights how for many students a fundamental part of moving to university \u2013 living with people their own age \u2013 may actually negatively impact sleep quality.<\/p>\n

Author Bio:<\/strong> Lucy Foulkes is a Lecturer of Psychology in Education at the University of York<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you went to university \u2013 or are still there \u2013 think about your sleep while there. Would you say you ticked all the boxes for healthy sleep \u2013 going to bed at a reasonable hour and waking up at the same time every day, sleeping for around eight hours, and avoiding sleeping in or […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":47113,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15645],"tags":[11405],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-47112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-sleep"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMajority of university students report poor quality sleep, putting them at higher risk of mental health problems - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/majority-of-university-students-report-poor-quality-sleep-putting-them-at-higher-risk-of-mental-health-problems\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Majority of university students report poor quality sleep, putting them at higher risk of mental health problems - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If you went to university \u2013 or are still there \u2013 think about your sleep while there. 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