What is sleep disturbance?

Put simply, sleep disturbance is when you are having trouble sleeping. It’s a term that describes various difficulties in falling asleep or staying asleep. It also includes oversleeping, which is typical in some forms of depression. Although it seems contradictory, oversleeping often makes people feel tired once they do wake up. Sleep problems are a central feature of anxiety or stress. Sometimes sleep disturbance does not have a mental health cause. These include physical health problems or environmental factors like noise or an uncomfortable bed. Worrying can interfere with normal sleeping habits, making it difficult for your mind and body to ‘switch off’ for essential rest. Anxiety leads to an increase in stress hormones. In turn, it prevents you from experiencing deeper stages of sleep. There is also a knock-on effect. If you experience sleep disturbances for any reason, you might worry about those, too. This ongoing cycle is something you can undo with effective psychological therapy (we’ll explain more about that later).

Diagnosing sleep disturbance

It’s common for patients to spot symptoms of sleep disturbance. Much of the time, people come to our clinic purely because of trouble sleeping. Sometimes people don’t recognise their sleep difficulties directly and seek treatment for issues like anxiety and depression. They often later report sleep disturbances in the questionnaires we ask them to complete. Usually, we get a more detailed understanding of your sleeping patterns using self-reporting techniques like sleep tracking diaries and observational instruments. These help us assess the quality and amount of your sleep across a few weeks. You may face many different problems that disturb your sleep. Tracking actual sleep patterns is a valuable starting point for deciding on the treatment of insomnia.

We also consider possible triggers such as:

Sleep disorders with mainly physical symptoms – like sleep apnoea, sleep paralysis, restless legs syndrome (RLS) and night terrors – are best diagnosed at a sleep clinic. This involves an overnight stay where specialists use instruments to check your brain activity. This isn’t a service we provide at Kove so please contact a GP to find out more about this.