SLEEP-DEPRIVED: A psychologist said that the less children sleep, the more likely they are to show signs of depression and anxiety and act impulsively

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 20, 2020
By: William Hetherington / Staff writer

Studies show that insufficient sleep could cause children psychological harm, a psychologist said, urging parents to monitor how much their children sleep.

The findings were reported in two recent studies, one published by scientific journal Molecular Psychiatry and the other by JAMA Network Open, Kaohsiung Drug Abuser Treatment Center clinical psychologist Ko Chun-ming (柯俊銘) said.

In the Molecular Psychiatry report, University of Warwick researcher Edmund Rolls and his team analyzed the sleeping patterns of 11,000 children aged nine to 11, comparing those who slept less than seven hours per night with those who slept nine to 11 hours per night, Ko said.

“Our findings showed that the behavior problems total score for children with less than seven hours sleep was 53 percent higher on average and the cognitive total score was 7.8 percent lower on average than for children with nine to 11 hours of sleep,” University of Warwick professor Jianfeng Feng said in a news release.   [FULL  STORY]