Sleep Deprivation Research Paper

On 12 March 2013, Secretary of the Army John McHugh launched the Army’s Ready and Resilient Campaign designed to help in the Army’s effort to build physical, emotional, and psychological resilience in Soldiers. The Performance Triad is a key enabler in this campaign. It’s a health program to educate Soldiers and their families of the benefits of improving sleep behavior, increasing daily activities, and improving nutrition. All three of these directly impact mental and physical performance and overall health. This paper will be focused on the importance of sleep and sleep behaviors and how sleep deprivation can affect operations.

Sleep is a beneficial necessity, both from a scientific and psychological standpoint, improving both mental and physical health. It plays an essential role in our growth and development as human beings. During sleep, our brains are growing and preparing for the day ahead so that we may be productive and attentive in every daily task. Without the recommended minimum of eight hours of sleep each night, people get agitated, distracted easily, gain health problems, make bad decisions, and acquire feelings of sadness and depression. Sleep deprivation is harmful and can cause a large amount of irreversible damage to ones brain, increasing the risk of diseases, strokes, and even diabetes. Throughout history, many authors have written about characters

A study recorded by Goldman, McDonough, and Rosemond in 1972 “noted that sleep-deprived junior doctors were more hesitant and showed less focused planning during a surgical procedure” (Harrison). Even doctors are affected by this. Doctors need to be able to make quick choices and to stay focus; people’s lives are in their hands, sleep is essential to being successful. Although everyone is not responsible for people’s lives, sleep still affects them mentally daily, and each day it builds up and becomes worse. In an interview with Professor Cathy Newell from Mesa Community College stated “they are able to get on a treadmill and still make it and what not, but where we see the most impairment is over a course. Like if we deprived them for 24-30 hours. Mental cognitive function tends to decrease” (Newell). People can last longer physically compare too mentally. The mind is running 24/7, and sleep gives it the ability to organize itself and fire off any leftover electrons, giving the mind the ability to dream in stage four REM sleep. Sleep deprivation does not happen overnight, it happens over a period of time. As Cathy Newell stated it happened after 24-30 hours of sleep deprivation marks the start of the cognitive function deteriorating. Many things can throw off a person’s sleep. A study conducted in 1792, a French geophysicist discovered the

Many have felt the effects of sleep deprivation and how it may affect one physically and mentally. For a nurse, when exhaustion sets in due to working long hours or inadequate sleep cognitive and physical functions begin to decrease resulting in poor critical thinking and clinical judgment. There may be circumstances, such as staffing shortages, which

Success in life is typically measured by the result of what is accomplished during the waking hours. The degree of effectiveness of those hours however, depend on effective rest. “Sleep is integral to the health and well-being of all people” (Wells 233). Sleep is simply defined as the body’s rest cycle – a time to recharge. The widely accepted metric for normal or sufficient sleep is about 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. When this metric is not met, either through total sleep loss or accumulated sleep debt, the effect can be dire, “Sleep deprivation results in poor memorizing, schematic thinking, which yields wrong decisions, and emotional disturbances such as deteriorated interpersonal responses and increased aggressiveness” (Orzeł-Gryglewska 95). Sleep deprivation hinders the abilities of the mind, harms the body, and shortens length of life.

The effects of long work hours, resulting in insufficient sleep have been well documented (Rogers, 2008). Insufficient sleep alone has been noted to cause cognitive problems, mood alterations, reduced job performance, reduced motivation, increased safety risks, and physiological changes (Rogers, 2008). Failure to obtain a sufficient amount of sleep is even an important contributor to medical errors (Rogers, 2008). Now think of the effects of sleep, and add in stressful work environments, short-staffing, pressure from administration, and unexpected events, we can begin to realize how patient outcomes may be greatly compromised.

The need for sleep and the feeling of being tired is a basic drive that every person goes through. Not recognizing the importance and the critical damage it does to each and everyone’s body can cause complications to oneself and to others. Not only does sleep debt affect people physically but also mentally and emotionally. Not being able to concentrate on what is being told or being able to complete the task because the body is tired and falling asleep isn't the wise nor productive way to be when it can be avoided. Though many do not bear in mind the hours of sleep the body is missing daily, people tend to blame other things in place of reality of what is really causing the disputed point.

There are two types of sleep deprivation: acute and chronic. Acute sleep deprivation refers to not getting any sleep or reducing the amount of time slept for one night or a couple of nights. In contrast, chronic sleep deprivation results when an individual constantly does not get enough sleep for multiple nights during weeks, months, or even years. In emergency medical services, a majority of emergency medical technicians and paramedics suffer from chronic sleep deprivation. While there are a lot of contributors to sleep deprivation, my research revealed that shift work was a major cause. Shift work involves working outside the conventional 9 am to 5 pm day and includes early morning shifts, evening or night shifts, and rotating shifts. This

What do the effects of sleep deprivation have on people? When a person does not get enough sleep, he or she is depriving his or her body of something that it needs. A delightful sleep is one of the most satisfying human experiences with a role to play in supporting a good mood and cognitive acuity as well as in promoting physiologic balance and resilience (Chittora, Jain and Suhalka). People think because they get an insufficient number of hours of sleep, they will not have an emotional impact by it. Sleep is a required need for peoples’ day to day life to be able to perform and stay healthy emotionally and physically. The effects of sleep deprivation are an issue because it affects mood, performance, and health.

Many people don’t understand how important sleep is. “One aspect of brain health that has been well examined through neuroimaging and cognitive testing is the influence of sleep on the brain. The findings are indeed a wake up call with regard to the impact on focus memory, test performance, mood, and high risk behaviors.”(Willis 1). Throughout

Lack of sleep is a major issue in the American workforce. Various studies reveal that a growing number of employees are not sleeping enough. In the United States alone, “40.6 million American workers, or 30% of the civilian workforce, don't get enough rest” (Rowan). Because many

Sleep deprivation has recently become a reoccurring health topic. Students, doctors, educators, and workaholics all have questions about how much sleep they need, how to get more of it, and the bare minimum needed to survive. In the January/February 2017 issue of The Atlantic magazine, Dr. James Hamblin explores all of these sleep related questions in his article “How To Sleep”.

Nature (2005) stated that sleep deprivation, is a serious concern for public safety due to all the accidents that have been cause due to lack of sleep. This essay will evaluate the basics of motivation for sleep and sleep deprivation with the following five perspectives: evolutionary, psychodynamic, behaviourists, cognitive and hierarchy of needs. This paper will also discuss the strengths and shortcomings, and the advantages and limitations, with the merit and my perspective of each perspective. Through evaluating these perspectives, it will be argued that the behaviourist and cognitive perspective will be the best to beat sleep deprivation.

Sleep loss poses a major risk to the 24h operating industries, where shift work is imperative. In Australia, sixteen percent of employees are classified as shift workers (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2003). The reaccommodated daily sleep dose for a healthy adult is 7- 8h (Van Dongen et al., 2003), but shift workers on average only obtain about 5h sleep a day (Akerstedt, 2003). This level of sleep loss is known to impair cognitive performance (Van Dongen et al., 2003), which can in turn compromise safety and reduce productivity (Rosekind, 2005).

According to Siegel (2005) sleep is a recurring period in human activity that is defined as a state of immobility with greatly reduced responsiveness, which can be distinguished from coma or anesthesia by its rapid reversibility (Barnes, Jiang & Lepak, 2016). Borbely and Achermann (1999) noted that a major process that underlies sleep regulation is the circadian process, a clocklike mechanism that is basically independent of prior sleep and waking and determines the alternation of periods with high and low sleep propensity. It is undisputed that sleep fulfills important functions, such as allowing physical repair processes or facilitating memory processes (Barnes, Jiang & Lepak, 2016). As noted by Sonnetag & Mojza (2008), sleep quantity entails the amount of time an individual spends in a sleeping state, and sleep quality refers to difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, and the number of awakenings experienced throughout the night. Sleep is proposed to be an important part of the recovery process that restores energy levels needed for engagement at work (Ebert, Thiart,Berking, 2015).