Sleep and Women’s Mental Health

Starting as early as adolescence and persisting across women's remaining lifetimes, both sleep disturbance and mental health concerns disproportionally affect women over men. Although the importance of sleep in relation to physical health has long been accepted, it has only been more recently that the complex, bidirectional, and critical relationship between sleep and mental health has been recognized. Given that women have higher risks for both sleep disturbances and psychiatric disorder, in this article, the authors consider This article starts by first providing an overview of sleep, normative age-related changes in sleep, and sex-specific differences in sleep. Then, the article considers common sleep disorders in women as well as the relationships between sleep disturbances and mental health more broadly. Finally, the authors discuss the relationships between sleep disturbance and depression, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer disease (AD) in women.