Any advice? Why is difficulty sleeping (adults) always linked with depression?

[twoisenoughmum]

I have never suffered from depression (am very grateful to be able to say) but I have had phases of being a terrible sleeper. On the days after a bad nights sleep = I feel down, terrible, tearful sometimes. When I've slept well = I feel fine.

Isn't it a chicken and egg situation? Surely some people get depressed after a time because they don't sleep well. Rather than you are depressed and THEREFORE you don't sleep well?

Just curious. Not in denial about depression; I really don't feel I am depressed. But sometimes I just can't bloody sleep! And that's a problem I'd like to cure without going on to ADs or anything.

One of the biological symptoms of depression is however that people find they go to sleep alright in the evening but then wake up in the early hours of the morning and are unable to get back to sleep.
I would agree however if you are not asleep for any part of the preceding night for any reason, your following day does tend to be rotten

Yes, Darrell, this is what I've heard. I'm an early-morning waker - never have any problems going to sleep, am usually off the minute my head hits the pillow. Isn't there any other explanation for it? I tend to wake in the early hours and go over and over in my head things I need to do. But I'm not a born worrier - it doesn't particularly worry me that I have a lot to do, we all do - I just can't seem to switch off. Is this what happens to people with depression? I know people with a clinical diagnosis of depression who sleep all the time. Me, I'd be happy with 7 hours every night.

Well , some people with depression do report that this symptom seems to improve when they've been treated with antidepressants and it seems to be almost separate to how they are feeling, mood wise.
I think if you have a bad nights sleep, then feel rubbish the next day , the night afterwards you would be so sleepy you would sleep, and that something when you are depressed ie the low serotonin levels must affect your sleeping activity, because the poor sleeping continues.
But I think some people who are not depressed , when they have a lot on or are poor sleepers do wake up early in the morning. I do sometimes.
I think it is ONE of the symptoms, so therefore shouldn't be taken in isolation but in context with everything else

Any idea how you get your seratonin levels up without ADs, Darrell or anyone?

exercise