Is sleep a magic pill for teen wellness in a mental health crisis?
When parents tell Denise Pope, an adolescent well-being expert, theyre worried for their childrens mental health, she responds with a question. How many hours are they sleeping?  Concerns for youth depression, anxiety and suicide have risen amid a deadly pandemic that disrupted schools across the country and isolated teens from their friends. Experts agree that consistent, sweet slumber can go a long way toward making many students feel better  but research suggests teens are skimping on this vital resource, and the problem has only worsened with Covid-19. Based on increased demand for behavioral health services over the past four months, Colorado childrens hospital recently declared a pediatric mental health state of emergency. The hospitals chief medical officer said the situation is more severe than anything he has seen in his 20 years of practice. Families are facing many ills during the pandemic that sleep cant fix, including death and economic loss. But Pope, co-founder of the Stanford University-affiliated nonprofit Challenge Success, offers a metaphor for sleeps powers, which she credits to psychologist Lisa Demour. If you had sort of a magic pill that you could take that would help increase your mental health, increase your physical health, lower your stress, make you more efficient, she says, most people would be itching for a dose. Well, we do have that magic pill. Its called sleep, says Pope. In recent years, school leaders have highlighted that quality sleep is an important precondition for academic success, helping young people pay attention and retain material. In a 2019 effort to safeguard rest for teens, California pushed back school start times for middle and high school students statewide. But the mental benefits extend far beyond learning, experts say, emphasizing sleep as a key to healthy emotional regulation for young people. In the fall of 2020, Popes Challenge Success team joined with NBC to survey 10,000 high school students on their well-being and academic engagement through the pandemic. They found that high schoolers were getting an average of 6.7 hours of sleep a night  well below the recommended nine-hour benchmark, which only 7% of students were hitting. Five per cent of students regularly slept under four hours per night, the research team found. Even though remote school eliminated commutes for many students, 43% of high schoolers reported that they were sleeping less since the pandemic struck, compared to only 23 who reported sleeping more. Anecdotal accounts indicate that quarantine spurred many teens to stay up all hours of the night, sleeping sporadically throughout the day while their Zoom cameras were off and using naps as a coping mechanism when they started to spiral. My sleep schedule really went off the rails when the pandemic started, Bridgette Adu-Wadier, now a senior at TC Williams high school in Alexandria, Virginia, told the 74. During the day, on top of attending classes, she had to keep an eye on her two younger brothers, first- and second-graders who would constantly interrupt her with quarrels over toys, requests for help with schoolwork and messes to clean up in the kitchen. Distracted days meant she frequently had to log late nights working to complete a never-ending stream of assignments. Sometimes, she would find herself nodding off while working. It was just really hard managing my time with all the things that I had to juggle, said Adu-Wadier. She has not been alone. Students in an advanced course shes enrolled in share a group chat, and on nights before assignments are due, messages buzz into the wee hours of the morning as peers scramble to finish. In the mornings, some of her friends cant drag themselves out of bed for online class. Between April and October last year, the share of mental health-related emergency department visits increased by 24% for children, and 31% for teens. Over one in five teenagers surveyed by EdWeek Research Center in April said their need for mental health counseling increased during the pandemic, compared to less than one in 10 who said it went down. Though experts say its too soon to tell whether the pandemic has spurred an increase in youth suicide attempts, parents of teens who took their own lives say that the circumstances of quarantine contributed to their childrens desperate condition. Susanne Button, a clinical psychologist who directs high school programming for the Jed Foundation, an organization dedicated to preventing youth suicide, is especially worried for LGBTQ+ youth. Queer and trans teens struggled with high rates of suicidal ideation even before the pandemic, she says, and in the past year, many have been forced to quarantine with family members who do not understand their identities. In her work with these students, Button emphasizes the importance of good sleep hygiene. You cant sleep off some of these stressors, but you certainly can link sleep into resilience, she told the 74. Adequate sleep for teenagers stabilizes mood and reduces irritability and depression. Adolescents who dont have enough sleep tend to actually engage in more high-risk behavior when they dont feel mentally calm or happy, continued Button. Adolescents who get enough sleep tend to make better decisions and be less impulsive around risk-taking when theyre feeling stressed or distressed.  Pope of Challenge Success suggests trying to push bedtime just a few minutes earlier every week  Dont let yourself look at that extra TikTok video, dont stay up for the news, whatever it is. Just try to move that needle by 15 minutes at a time.  Screen use before bed is something parents ought to monitor, Pope says. A mother herself, shes had to institute a no-devices-at-night rule for her kids. Of course, many youth live in conditions where it can be tricky to cultivate friendly sleeping conditions. They may be staying with relatives or in a homeless shelter. Still, even small changes can help, says Pope, who recommends earplugs and sleep masks to mute outside stimuli. As for Adu-Wadier, the long hours she logged studying for high-level courses have paid off. This spring, she earned admission to study at Northwestern University on a full scholarship. On the night she got the good news, the college-bound senior didnt stay up late celebrating. Instead, she tucked herself in at 10.30pm. I just went straight to bed, Adu-Wadier remembers. I didnt spend a ton of time trying to do assignments or work on college applications because I didnt need to do any more college applications. So I just attempted to go to sleep.  Whether it was thanks to the college admission news or the full nights rest, the next day had a certain shine to it. I woke up feeling a lot different, said Adu-Wadier. Its a very great feeling.