James Donaldson on Mental Health - Teens and Sleep: The Cost of Sleep Deprivation

Substance use and risky behavior Research by Dr.

Carskadon and several others shows that sleep-deprived teens are far more likely to use stimulants like caffeine and nicotine to get through the day but also to deal with sleep-related negative moods by self-medicating with alcohol .

They’re also more likely to engage in unprotected sex and reckless driving than teens who get upwards of seven hours of sleep a night because they lack impulse control and suffer from impaired judgment that leads to poor decision-making.

As a college student, Carolyn Capputo made the choice to drive knowing she was severely sleep deprived even after she’d fallen asleep at the wheel.

Now a number of years out of college, she knows she was lucky she didn’t cause a serious accident, but at the time it just didn’t seem like a big deal.

“The summer before my sophomore year in college,” she says, “I’d routinely stay up past 3am chatting online with my best friend because we missed each other and were still keeping college hours (at least in terms of staying awake).

Then I’d wake up at 6:30 in the morning to go to my summer job.

I fell asleep driving to work more than once.” “There is data that shows that because teens are not fully developed in terms of their executive functioning,” says Dr.

Carskadon, “even acute short-sleep can lead to risky behavior and poor judgment.

The combination of the lack of infrastructure and poor sleep sends them down the wrong path.” Sleep and mood Many of the teens interviewed for this story citied mood as the first thing affected by sleep deprivation .