Seeing Insomnia in Young Adults
Insomnia in young adults is actually quite a common condition. However, most people don’t see the condition as insomnia. For most of the time, people would just see it as purely part of growing up in which bedtimes are just for babies and the “I’m independent” lifestyle is the cool thing to have.
Causes of Insomnia In Young Adults
There are several factors why insomnia in young adults is quite prevalent. To start off, the body clock of a person starts to change once puberty begins. Before the onset of adolescence, this clock would actually direct you to naturally fall asleep from around 8 to 9 PM. However, for young adults, the time is two hours delayed. Additionally, it is during this age when teens discover and explore smoking, drinking, and hanging out late with their peers. This is also the time of age in which coffee becomes a regular part of their everyday diet to keep up with their daily activities. However, what most teenagers and parents do not know is that these habits could actually cause or make worse insomnia in young adults and may even be the cause of other kinds of sleep disorders.
Stress is the number one cause of insomnia, whether in adults, young adults or children. However, in the context of young adults, stressors in school in school such as peer pressure, performance, and relationships with friends and teachers could all be contributing factors to insomnia.
Nonetheless, there area some cases in which insomnia in young adults actually began in childhood. This is so because a lot of insomnia cases during childhood are overlooked and were only found out to exist during the teenage years already.
Treatment of Insomnia In Young Adults Since young adults are able to follow instructions already and may have more severe insomnia cases and bad sleeping habits than children, treatment for insomnia in young adults are somewhat similar to those of adult insomnia. Here are some of them.
First off, there is light therapy. Here, exposure to sunlight or bright light would be the key for your teen’s body to realize that it is time to wake up. Thus, keeping the bedroom dark would signal their body that it is sleeping time.
Insomnia medication is available too. Medicines with melatonin content are the ones usually used to treat insomnia. Melatonin, is actually a hormone that induces sleep. However, this should be done under a doctor’s prescription and only at a limited amount of time, to avoid possible addiction.
