Applying Sleep Research to University Students: Recommendations for Developing a Student Sleep Education Program

Abstract

Several studies indicate that universitystudents report at least twice as many sleepdifficulties than the general population;especially those related to variable sleepschedules (Brown, Buboltz, & Soper, 2001;Lack, 1986). Further, students’ sleep prob-lems may be getting worse. One study foundthat students average sleep length declinedfrom 7.5 hours in 1969 to 6.5 hours in 1989(Hicks & Pellegrini, 1991). This reductionin sleep length is especially alarming sincethe last several hours of sleep contain theRapid Eye Movement Sleep, a time whenmany people dream, appears to play a keyrole in learning efficiency (Smith & Lapp,1991).Such trends in student sleep patterns areespecially concerning since sleep difficultiesin college students can result in increasedirritability and lowered interpersonal sen-sitivity, (Jean-Louis, Von Gizycki, Zizi, N Pilcher & Ott, 1998; Zammit,1988), impaired cognitive functioning(De Koninck, Lorrain, Christ, Proulx, C Lack, 1986; Pilcher &Walters, 1997) and more anxious anddepressive symptoms (Pilcher, Ginter, &Sadowsky, 1997). Many students are un-aware that their academic difficulties may berelated to their sleep habits. In fact, manyrate their cognitive abilities higher when theyare sleep deprived, while objective evidenceindicates they perform worse than those who