Chronic Sleep Loss Affects School Students

Inadequate quantity or quality of sleep, including voluntary or involuntary sleeplessness and circadian rhythm sleep disorders increases the chance that children and adolescents who attend school have a tendency to fall asleep or become sleepy while at school. It has been found that ‘chronic sleep loss affects many aspects of adolescents lives and that there are repercussions of unhealthy sleep habit.’ (Owens, J, 2013). Chronic sleep loss is very serious and affects school children because the pupils are too tired to achieve high academic due to low concentration levels, and also raises the risk of naughtiness.
Side effects of sleep disorders include ‘unhealthy sleep patterns and also play a role in health related consequences.’ (Owens, J,
It is when individuals experience a prolonged pattern of disruption when sleeping due to alterations in their circadian timing of their sleep. The alterations relate to the individuals social and physical environment. This correlates with sleepiness because as it is the state of being sleepy, DSPD results in individuals, including school kids being overtired and sleep deprived. DSPD can come from the ‘use of media in bed, specifically just before [students] go to bed.’ (Fossum, Nordnes, Storemark, Biorvatn & Pallesen, 2014). This is demonstrated due to a hormone called melatonin. For an individual with DSPD, they don’t want more sleep than average, it’s just their body wants to sleep and wake later than normal. This is to do with your body clock and is most common within teenagers. Rising to natural light regularly can help contain DSPD and may even cure
It is shown in Sivertsen, Pallesen, Stormark, Boe, Lundervold & Hysing (2013) ‘The prevalence of [DSPD] is significantly higher among girls than boys.’ And that ‘Adolescents with [DSPD] had significantly higher odds ratio of non-attendance at school.’ This shows that there is a correlation between DSPD and sleepiness at school within children and adolescents. And even goes to the extent of avoiding school due to delayed sleep phase disorder. As seen in Hale & Guan (2015) ‘age was a determinant’ within all studies that were reviewed. The idea of the studies was to find the association between the amount of media screen time and sleep. And there were varied results due to the age range of the studies that focused on school aged children and adolescents. Other factors which lead to daytime sleepiness within students includes being oblivious to the body’s need for adequate sleep, becoming ill, large amount of homework, some medications, the sleeping environment, and even having poor sleep hygiene. All these factors can also influence sleep deprivation in children and adolescents, and leads to sleepiness during school