The Impact of Sleep Issues in Teens
DBT Skills for Adolescents and FamiliesSo when we talk about emotion regulation skills, and we talk about reducing vulnerability to negative emotions, one of the things that I think is underrated, under reported, under treated is sleep problems among teenagers. And it's never been worse. Something really important for therapists to keep in mind when you're working with teens today is that their sleep has gotten all out of whack. And so many kids walking around have sleep problems, sleep disorders, or most commonly, they're just really sleep deprived. When I started working in this field many years ago, I underestimate the effect of sleep on so many other of the kids' problems. Because we had suicide and self harm and depression and trauma, sleep felt fell at the bottom of the list. But now I realize that when kids have trouble falling asleep, staying asleep or waking up early, and has differential effects on worsening, suicidal thinking, self harm behavior, and self harm ideation. So that sleep is really having a direct effect on severe life threatening behaviors.
And we know that sleep deprivation, sleep problems, interrupted sleep increases emotional vulnerability. And when your emotional mobility is increased, everything is gonna suffer. We have been aggressively treating it both in individual therapy and tracking it on their diary cards. Because if we don't treat it, it's gonna go untreated and then they're gonna stay awake.
They're gonna be unable to focus in school. They're gonna have poor concentration, morangs society, more depression, more self harm, we have to treat it, and we can treat it behaviorally. And thank goodness, we have DBT because I think at least we have a broad reaching group of skills and strategies that can really support these kids and their families.