Late Night Habits and the Mental Health of Young Adults

I've written previously on this blog about the challenge of making good use of time. In my post 'The Tyranny and Challenge of Time' I cited the 2009 OECD Social Indicators report that has shown Australians spend less leisure time with friends than just about everyone. I also wrote some time ago about 'Time and the Family' and in particular how families are spending less time together including a reduction in eating meals together.  Finally, I have written about the impact of 'Children's Loss of Play', including its impact on them and the things they might be learning about rest and work. 

Our inability to manage time seems to be an increasing challenge in an age when ironically we have so many technology applications that reduce travel times, remove much of the domestic drudgery of past ages and increases our opportunities to use time well. There is no doubt that we are living in an age where we are busy beyond what is good for us and that this can have an impact on others.

A recent research study has raised new fears about the way young adults (aged 17-24) use their time, and in particular the way their sleep habits are affecting their mental health. 

Sleep Deprivation Study
 
Associate Professor Nicholas Glozier from The George Institute for International Health, University of Sydney, Sydney has led a team of researchers to examine the impact of sleep deprivation on the mental health of young adults. The results are worrying. The findings were published in September in the journal 'Sleep'. Just over twenty thousand young adults (aged 17-24) were randomly identified through the state vehicle licensing authority and surveyed. A random sample of 5,000 people was then chosen for follow-up interviews 12-18 months later. There were 2837 who provided complete data.

 
What the study showed is that about 25% of young adults are affected by psychological distress, which is defined as poor mental health comprising common symptoms of low mood and anxiety. As well, a considerable proportion of young adults who indicated some level of distress in the first stage of the study went on to develop more severe mental disorders, recurrent episodes and the associated negative effects of this, including suicide attempts, self harm and welfare dependence.

The research identified a link between the amount of sleep that young people have and psychological problems; specifically, that shorter sleep was associated with psychological distress. The very short sleepers amongst those identified in the first stage of the study without psychological distress had an increased risk for the onset of psychological distress. Furthermore, of 945 participants who did report psychological distress in stage one, 419 (44%) were distressed at the follow up stage of the research. It was found that each hour less of sleep increased the risk of psychological distress persisting after all other factors were controlled or discounted. Participants who demonstrated 'long sleep duration' showed no association with distress at any time point.

In relation to the amount of sleep young people have:

• 18% reported sleeping less than seven hours per night on average and a further 30% slept between 7 and 8 hours.  
• Almost one third (31.9%) returned scores on the study instrument, which indicated high levels of current psychological distress.  
• Over half of those reporting fewer than 6 hours sleep had higher levels of current psychological distress compared to a quarter of those sleeping the recommended level in young adults of 8-9 hours per night. 
• Shorter sleep duration was also associated with a number of baseline characteristics including recent deliberate self-harm, using marijuana, excessive Internet use, other drugs and drinking at harmful levels.

Psychological distress was also associated more strongly with the female gender (40% versus 28% in males), unemployment (33% versus 28% in the employed), drug use (45% versus 32%), harmful alcohol use (38% versus 32%), high sensation seeking behaviour (44% versus 22% in lowest category) and recent deliberate self-harm (70% versus 31%).

This study's findings suggest that recent increases in the levels of distress reported by young adults may be related to changes in their sleep patterns.

Associate Professor Glozier suggests that:

"The increased reporting of stress seen in many countries over the past decade or two in this young adult population may reflect lifestyle or other changes that lead to too few hours of sleep."

The researchers also report that shorter sleep duration in younger age groups is associated with a number of factors including increased television viewing, computer gaming, and Internet use.  All of these appear to be becoming more commonplace, with young people communicating with each other late into the night, gaming, updating their Facebook and so on. While we have become accustomed to young people wanting to stay up late and rise later, this research suggests that wake time is not changing much through the week due to school, university or work commitments. This has the net effect of reducing sleep.

Making Sense of these Issues

It seems that young adults are not managing their time well and as a consequence, they may be losing valuable sleep time with disastrous consequences for their lives. This troubles me because my suspicion is that there is a relationship between the topics of all of my posts on time and its use.  What is common?

• Life is busy
• Time seems limited
• We manage this time poorly
• We end up doing things that don't help our relationships with other people
• We seem to have a clash between our drive to succeed and live life to the full and  our well-being

Robert Banks suggested in his book 'The Tyranny of Time' we need to reclaim and rethink the way we use our time. The solution is not to drop out of society, to take extended breaks between periods of excessive pressure and time stress, nor is it just the application of self-help strategies.  Rather, we need to look at the deeper issues that drive the way we use time. Are our priorities in life distorted and driven by things that get in the way? In biblical terms these would be seen as idols, that is, something that attains such prominence in our lives that it supplants the central place that God and his purposes should have in our lives. The Bible teaches that we were made to centre our lives on God not other things. Study, work, friends, games, families, while in and of themselves are good, can distract us from what we designed to be if they assume a dominant place in our lives. We are commended to serve the living and true God (1 Thessalonians 1:9) and avoid those things that distract us from this. It is in turning to Christ that we will achieve true meaning and purpose.

What can we do about this?

Associate Professor Glozier and his colleagues are trying to devise clinical methods to help young people.  Patients are being treated with light therapy in the mornings and hormones such as Melatonin to help them sleep earlier. While these things will no doubt help those whose lives have developed psychological distress, there are more fundamental things that we can do before problems develop.

What are some of the basic things that all parents, teachers, bosses, brothers and friends can do to help?  It seems to me that in life one of the most significant influences on us are other people and the examples they set for us. We need to start with our own lives and begin to set new examples. As parents we may also need to be much more proactive in moderating our children's behaviour at younger ages and not placing burdens on them that inadvertently may drive them towards unhealthy pressures to study, work, succeed and be successful in everything.  Parents might ask the following basic questions:

• How great a priority do I place on achievement and success in my own life?
• What example do I set for my children, workmates and friends in relation to how I use my time?
• To what extent do my priorities model priorities for my children and other people around me that might have a negative impact on how they use their time?

While my focus in this post has been on young adults, and the responsibilities of parents, I could just as easily have turned the focus on workers and their leaders, church members and their pastors and so on.

Writing this post has led me to engage in much self reflection about the priorities I have in my own life. I would encourage readers to do likewise.   

  

Other Resources

Nicholas Glozier and others (2010). 'Short sleep duration in prevalent and persistent psychological distress in young adults: the DRIVE study', Sleep. 

The Tyranny and Challenge of Time

Life is busy! It seems at times that almost every conversation involves telling someone that we're busy, or listening to them saying how busy they are. I have to work very hard at not including in my responses to questions like "How are you?", words like "Not bad, but I'm very busy", "Flat out" etc. But it isn't just our words that signal that we are (or feel) busy. Ever noticed the things people do in traffic (ever thought about what we do in traffic ourselves, and why)? Yesterday I saw a woman flossing her teeth as we nudged towards a traffic light. This seemed almost a bridge too far to me. I've also witnessed people:

• Shaving (electric!)
• Doing their nails
• Talking on the telephone (hands free and non-hands free), even sending SMS messages
  
• Putting on mascara, lipstick, eye line, face powder, moisturising cream
• Plucking eyebrows
• Reading the newspaper
• Reading books and magazines in slow moving traffic or at every set of lights
• Going over business papers
  
• Doing their nails
• Putting on a tie
• Using central and side mirrors for all many of body checks
• Hair combing

There was a time when we did all this stuff at home before we walked out the door. But this age is so fast paced, and we are so time poor, that people continue to try to find time wherever they can get it.

But while the above examples might make us laugh, and are at the very least a road safety risk, there are some more serious consequences for those of us struggling to manage our time. I've talked previously on this blog about the loss of family time (here) and meal time (here), but it seems that we now find it hard in this country to find time for just about anyone outside the nuclear family. This in itself is not good for families, it would seem to me that the last thing we want to teach our children is that all the time in families is devoted to the support of the members inside the house (the nuclear family). What might we be teaching our children about serving others, sharing our lives and faith with others, being a neighbour, citizenship, our view of heaven and eternity etc?

The 2009 OECD Social Indicators report has shown that Australians spend less leisure time with friends than just about everyone. Only 3% of our leisure time is spent entertaining friends (compared to 43% in Turkey). By way of contrast, Australians spend 41% of our leisure time watching television or listening to radio. It seems that when we're not at work, or doing our daily ablutions in the car, that we're holed up at home.

It also seems that Christians are not immune from this. In fact, Robert Banks suggests that it may be worse. In his publication 'The Tyranny of Time: When 24 Hours Is Not Enough' he says:

With respect to time, Christians are a good deal worse off than many. This is especially the case if they live in a large city, belong to the middle-classes, have managerial or professional positions, or combine outside employment with substantial household responsibilities.

Christians and people raised in a Christian setting tend to take their work more seriously than others. They also place a high value on family obligations. And they are often in the forefront of community and charitable associations. The upshot of this commitment to work, community and family is, as my eldest son commented: ‘Christians are like trains—always on the move, always in a rush, and always late.'

Such a frenzied lifestyle has consequences. Health can suffer, relationships can become strained, family members can become neglected, opportunities for ministry curtailed, fellowship with God interrupted, models for life communicated that we never intended. As we become too focused on the things of earth, we lose sight of the things of heaven. In relationships alone, at work or in the neighbourhood, we can easily lose sight of what is important to God. Banks suggests that our failure to be good stewards of time can have negative consequences for relationships in very subtle ways:

Consequently our encounters with others are becoming more and more limited and instrumental. We associate rather than interrelate, hold ourselves back rather than open ourselves up, pass on or steal by one another rather than pause and linger awhile. The number of our close friends drops and the quality of our married life diminishes

Why do we stay so busy?

Writing this post is challenging for me, I am not immune to these issues. In fact, those who know me best probably think my life is too busy. Why do we become so busy?

There can be many and varied reasons. For example:

• Some are busy due to personal circumstances which may be out of their control. If you are a single parent with little family support who has to work to live then there will be less time to do all that life requires.
• For some, work has an unhealthy hold on us and is far too central to our sense of self worth and identity.
• Some have an unhealthy sense of their own worth and assume that if they don't do things that no-one else will be able to.
  
• Others may be busy simply because they want so much materially, that longer hours, and maybe even a second job, seem necessary to feed our need for things.
• Some may make themselves busy at work to avoid doing things they find harder (e.g. staying longer at the office to avoid providing child care, domestic chores etc at home).
• Selfish ambition or perfectionism can drive us to give an unhealthy amount of time to work.
• Others may have addictions that act as 'black holes' sucking large amounts of time from our lives (e.g. online shopping, social media, blogging, gambling etc) and not leaving time for others.

Somehow, we need to remind ourselves that life on this earth is fleeting and short (Psalm 39:4-5), that God has plans for our time, and in fact he has appointed times for all things (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8). We should understand that God makes all things beautiful in his time and that we should enjoy the things that he has given us (Ecclesiastes 3:9-13). There is also a responsibility to use our time wisely with full knowledge that the day of the Lord fast approaches; we need to avoid the lure of the desires of the flesh (Romans 13:11-14). Paul urged the Ephesian church to be careful with their lives and their time:

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is (Ephesians 5:15-17).

The phrase that Paul uses "making the best use of" can also mean to "redeem" or "purchase". We need to get back lost time, or use it well.

As Christians we need to guard our walk and not grow weary in doing good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith (Gal 6:9-10). We also need to know when to slow down, to step outside the rush of life and focus our hearts only on our God. Jesus demonstrated this again and again in his earthly life.

J. Hampton Keathley in a useful article, 'The Stewardship of Time' reminds us that:

Being a good steward of the time God gives is not really a matter guarding the minutes so we can spend our time productively. Certainly we need to wisely use our time, but even more importantly we need to have a grasp of time in the sense of understanding the great events of God in history, past, present, and future as they are set forth in Scripture in the grand scheme of the plan of God.

We are citizens of heaven living on earth for but a short time as "sojourners and exiles" (1 Peter 2:11). This should change our attitude to how we use our time. It is a time of darkness that will throw up untold challenges as we battle with the desires of the flesh. As we await the Lord's return we are to act as ambassadors for Christ, seeking to make disciples of all of the nations (Matthew 28:19-20).

"So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31)

Related posts and resources

Robert Banks, The Tyranny of Time: When 24 Hours Is Not Enough, InterVarsity, Downers Grove, IL, 1983, p. 32.

'Time and the Family' (here)

'The loss of mealtime: Is it important?' (here)