Why is Sleep Important for Teens with Anxiety?

February 5, 2025

By: Sarah Petzold, MS

While not everyone enjoys the act of sleeping, most surveys indicate that the majority of people consider sleep to be something they value. It is a well-known fact that sleep is essential to our overall health and well-being, yet so many people do not get the recommended number of hours of sleep each night. Especially teens. 

According to The Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, it is recommended that teenagers (ages 13 to 18) should sleep 8 to 10 hours per night on a regular basis to promote optimal health. Despite this recommendation, over 75% of U.S. high school students do not get the sleep they need. This statistic leads so many to wonder, what’s the big deal around sleeping, how does sleep affect teens, and why aren’t teens getting enough sleep?

Why is Sleep Important?

As we try to understand the big deal around sleep, it’s important to understand the significance of sleep. As mentioned above, sleep is critical to our physical, mental, and emotional health. Sleeping the number of recommended hours on a regular basis is associated with better health outcomes including: improved attention, behavior, learning, memory, emotional regulation, quality of life, and mental and physical health. These skills are especially important when it comes to teenagers, who are in a critical period of growth.

On the contrary, sleeping fewer than the number of recommended hours is associated with attention, behavior, and learning problems. These issues might become even more pronounced in school, work, and extracurricular settings for many teenagers. Likewise, insufficient sleep or sleeping more than the number of recommended hours is associated with adverse health outcomes such as hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and mental health problems. For teens, this can be profoundly impactful because again, their minds and bodies are in a cricitcal time period for healthy development.

How Sleep Affects Teen Mental Health Problems?

It’s been established that sleep is essential to our overall health, namely our physical health. But what about our mental and emotional well-being? How does sleeping too much or too little affect our mental health? Research shows that sleep issues are linked to most mental health problems, including anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. In fact, sleep disturbance is both a symptom of mental health problems as well as a predictor of these problems. 

If teens aren’t getting enough sleep or are getting too much sleep, it can lead to irritability, anger, reactivity to stress, and impulsive behaviors. These mood issues and behaviors can then contribute to symptoms of anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns. For example, one study found that when teens got shorter or poorer quality sleep than usual, they were more likely to have suicidal thinking the next day—in part because poor sleep made interactions with other people feel worse and reduced the positive effects of good interactions with other people. That is certainly not beneficial for teenage brains that are already more sensitive to emotional and social experiences.

Sleep disturbance is also affected by other factors, including gender, age, and race. One study shows that sleep disturbance affected 80% of female students, 84% of 12-grade students, and 84% of black students. Knowing these factors and trends can help you be more aware of how sleep may affect your own teenager.

Why Aren’t Teens Getting Enough Sleep?

There’s a number of factors that contribute to why teens may not be getting enough sleep including:

• Hormonal Changes: Teens’ biological rhythms naturally shift later with the onset of puberty, which means that teens can’t just “go to sleep” earlier because school start times move earlier as they transition to high school. Most high schools begin around 7-7:30 AM, necessitating students to rise around 5:30-6:30 AM.
• Social Pressures: Social pressures such as homework, extracurricular activities, and social media may cause teens to feel pressure to stay awake and involved rather than prioritize sleep. 
• Electronic Devices: Screens are another major culprit as using phones and tablets before bed can impact sleep quality.
• Sleep Disorders/Stress: Stress and other sleep disorders like sleep apnea can affect sleep.

Next Steps

Sleep is not something to mess around with, especially for teenagers. Teenagers with mental health concerns already such as anxiety or depression may be even more affected by sleep disturbances, so it is extremely vital that teens are getting the sleep they need. 

If you are a parent concerned about your teen’s sleeping habits, it’s important to contact a healthcare provider to discuss these concerns and seek out an evaluation for a possible sleep disorder. Therapy for teens can be instrumental in helping understand and address sleep concerns as well as providing psychoeducation about sleep hygiene. Please reach out to one of our clinicians to seek next steps for you or your child.