How does sleep affect our mental health?

At the weekend the clocks went back, which means our sleep could be affected. And with the just-released report from our charity partner the Mental Health Foundation, we’ve put together some of our best sleep tips.

Sleep often feels like a distant memory. Are the ups and downs of life keeping you awake at night? Perhaps the clock changes or the transition of the season is playing havoc with your sleep routine and causing you to feel more anxious and irritable?

Sleep is integral to all aspects of our lives, yet sleep is often one of the first things we compromise when things become busy or overwhelming. This week our charity partner the Mental Health Foundation published their new report - Taking Sleep Seriously: Sleep and our Mental Health, and found that more than a third of adults (35%) said that sleeping poorly had made them feel more anxious, more than four in ten adults (42%) said poor sleep over the previous month had made them feel more stressed and overwhelmed – while more than four in ten (43%) said poor sleep had made them feel more irritable and angry.

Professor Colin Espie, Professor of Sleep Medicine at the University of Oxford says, “Sleep is a ‘need to have’, just like oxygen, water and food. We need to value and prioritise the benefits of sleep because good sleep has a very significant positive impact on our mental health.”

So how do we get a good night’s sleep? We pulled out six pieces of advice from our archive, by the experts:

“We use the acronym HEAL to help you consider how you could improve your sleep.” The Mental Health Foundation

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How to get an excellent night’s sleep with Matthew Walker, neuroscientist, sleep expert and author of Why We Sleep

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How to breathe for better sleep with Rebecca Dennis, founder of Breathing Tree and Stuart Sandeman, leading breath coach and founder of Breathpod.

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How to create an easy-peasy bedtime routine with Rob Hobson, nutritionist and author of The Art of Sleeping (and former insomniac).

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The most googled questions on sleep answered by Lisa Artis, Head of The Sleep Council.

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Author of Sleep Recovery, yoga teacher and psychotherapist Lisa Sanfilippo (who suffered from insomnia, anxiety and overactive stress responses) gives us 5 steps to super sleep.

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