Rethinking sleep and mental health, with Philip Gehrman, PhD
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Why is sleep considered essential for mental and physical health?
Too often we treat sleep as a luxury rather than a necessity. It's something we sacrifice when life gets busy, but even as the world makes it harder to prioritize sleep, psychologists and other researchers are finding increasing evidence that sleep is critical to our mental and physical health. They're also finding that addressing sleep problems may be an effective and underused way to treat mental health disorders. So what exactly happens in the sleeping brain? Why does a bad night's sleep affect our mood so profoundly? How are sleep and circadian rhythms connected to mental health? What have researchers learned about using sleep-based interventions to treat mental health disorders? And what can all of us do to get enough good quality sleep in a world that seems designed to disrupt it?
Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills. My guest today is Dr. Philip German, a professor of clinical psychology and psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs the Sleep Neurobiology and Psychopathology Lab. His research focuses on sleep, circadian rhythms, and mental health, including the role that sleep disturbances play in mental health disorders and the development of new treatments for insomnia and other sleep problems. He has published extensively in leading academic journals, and his work has been covered in media outlets including Time magazine and the Washington Post.
He recently spoke with APA's magazine Monitor on Psychology for an article on the new science of sleep. Доктор Керман, thank you for joining me today.
Thanks so much for having me.
Let's start with the big picture. Why is sleep so important for our health and our mental health and what's happening in the brain while we're asleep that helps us function while we're awake?
The short answer is there there's a lot. We know that sleep plays uh a so many critical roles for healthy brain functioning. So it's tied to our emotion regulations uh abilities. Uh it's tied even to the clearance of waste products from the brain. So there's just a lot happening during sleep that is uh critical for a healthy brain functioning.
Now, sleep problems are often seen as a symptom of depression, anxiety, or other mental health disorders, but your research suggests that sleep can be a cause, not just a consequence of mental health problems. How has our understanding of the relationship between sleep and mental health changed in recent years?
Yeah, this is something the sleep field has been trying to change for a very long time. Because as you said, it's just been assumed by the mental health field that when people have insomnia, you don't really need to pay attention to the insomnia or the other sleep problems. You just have to focus on their depression, on their anxiety, on their psychosis, whatever it may be. But there's now several dozen. In longitudinal studies showing that for people who don't meet the criteria for any mental health problems, if they have trouble sleeping, they're roughly two to three times more likely to go on to develop depression, anxiety, substance use disorder. So poor sleep can actually be a risk factor increasing vulnerability to poor mental health.
And is that being taught in in schools right now?
Well, most mental health providers, regardless of discipline, get virtually no education about sleep in their graduate school curriculum, despite the fact that we spend a third of our lives doing it. And so we're we're trying to increase the education that's out there, but unfortunately most people just aren't getting much of anything.
So what are the implications of this new research for psychologists and other mental health clinicians?
It really opens up our toolbox for a range of different options. And so uh, you know, I'm always trying to could teach mental health providers to pay attention to sleep, to listen to what their clients are telling them about their sleep, and to try to figure out: are there specific sleep disorders going on?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why is sleep considered essential for mental and physical health?
0:00–4:15
2
What does brain activity look like during sleep and why does it matter?
4:15–7:45
3
How can poor sleep act as a risk factor for depression, anxiety, and substance‑use disorders?
7:45–11:35
4
What sleep‑focused interventions can clinicians use to treat mental‑health disorders?
11:35–15:02
5
How does deep‑sleep waste clearance relate to inflammation and dementia risk?
15:02–18:34
6
What are the pros and cons of medication versus CBT‑I for chronic insomnia?
18:34–22:06
7
How do circadian‑rhythm disruptions (night‑owls, shift work) affect mood and cognition?
22:06–25:14
8
What practical habits can listeners adopt to improve sleep quantity and quality?
25:14–28:07
Speakers
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