


The quality of rest matters just as much as the quantity, a new study posits, and having disrupted sleep can have as much effect on mental health as only getting four hours a night.

It will come as no surprise to new parents struggling after a night of feeds, or to doctors on call, but being woken up briefly during an otherwise normal night of sleep is as detrimental as sleeping for just four hours.

‘Sleep is not an indulgence’: It’s arrogant to think you don’t need adequate rest, scientists say

“It’s not rocket science,” says Russell Foster, explaining how most of us are deprived of sleep and in need of an early night. No, but it is neuroscience — and as Professor of Circadian Neuroscience at Oxford University, he should know.

Foster is one of the U.K.’s leading experts on sleep, and an evangelical advocate of us all getting eight undisturbed hours each night, not just to improve our physical well being but our mental health, too.

Along with a group of other experts at Cambridge, Harvard and Surrey universities, he has put together a report on sleep and our body clocks, and one of his main conclusions is striking.


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Researchers discovered that being woken from a deep slumber by a crying baby or an emergency call causes the same confusion, depression and fatigue as being severely sleep-deprived.
It means that even when people get a total of seven hours sleep a night, having that sleep regularly interrupted will leave them feeling as if they have slept for barely half that time.

Researchers at Tel Aviv University warned that such interruptions were likely to leave parents feeling bewildered, dejected and exhausted and could have a detrimental effect on on-call professionals, including doctors or firemen, impacting upon their attention span and ability to make decisions.


“Doctors on call, who may receive several phone calls a night, also experience disruptions. These night wakings could be relatively short — only five to 10 minutes — but they disrupt the natural sleep rhythm. The impact of such night wakings on an individual’s daytime alertness, mood, and cognitive abilities had never been studied. Our study is the first to demonstrate seriously deleterious cognitive and emotional effects.”

The team studied 61 adults who were monitored at home using wristwatch-like devices that detected when they were asleep and awake.

The volunteers slept a normal eight-hour night, then experienced a night in which they were woken four times by phone calls every 90 minutes and not allowed to go back to sleep for 15 minutes. The students were asked each following morning to complete computer tasks to assess alertness and attention, as well as to fill out questionnaires to determine their mood.

Disrupted sleepers were found, on average, to be 24% more confused, 29% more depressed and 43% more fatigued


The volunteers were found, on average, to be 24% more confused, 29% more depressed and 43% more fatigued after broken sleep.

A second experiment in which volunteers were allowed to sleep for only four hours, showed similar results, suggesting regular night disruption has the same impact as getting only half the recommend eight hours of sleep.

“Our study shows the impact of only one disrupted night,” Sadeh said.


‘Besides the physical effects of interrupted sleep, parents often develop feelings of anger’



The team also hopes the findings will encourage employers to reassess shift work and staff being placed on call.

Michal Kahn, a co-author of the report, added: “Our findings bear relevance to substantial portions of the population whose sleep is regularly fragmented, including medical students, shift workers, military personnel and parents.


The study was published in the journal Sleep Medicine.

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