How Does Insufficient Sleep Affect Children's Health?

Candice Alfano, PhD, a clinical psychologist and associate psychology professor at the University of Houston, and Cara Palmer, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology at the University of Houston, are currently conducting a study to establish the detailed ways insufficient sleep during childhood constructs elevated risk for emotional disorders in subsequent years.
Alfano states, “In particular, we are interested in understanding how children appraise, express, regulate and later recall emotional experiences, both when sleep is adequate and when it is inadequate.” We can rely and trust these experiments with children as participants because similarly to other psychological issues, sleep behaviors and patterns also develop at an early age. The primary goal of this study is to distinguish distinct emotional, behavioral, and cognitive processes, that when accompanied with sleep disruptions, make children susceptible to developing anxiety and depression.
An individual usually undergoes 5 cycles through the stages of sleep during an eight-hour night. Moreover, the first period in stage 4 is the longest, sleep becomes lighter as the night progresses, and REM sleep becomes longer throughout ones’
Sleep and mood are very closely connected, for instance, inadequate sleep can increase the risk of developing a mood disorder, such as anxiety or depression. It has been founded that two nights of interrupted sleep can cause young children to obtain a smaller amount of pleasure from positive stimuli, being less responsive to them, and being less likely to recollect specifics afterwards. In addition, those who received ample sleep had less perceptible emotional