Stress about school and life keeps 68 percent of students awake at night — 20 percent of them at least once a week. Stress affects the quality of their sleep far more than alcohol, caffeine or late-night electronics use, a new study shows.
Not only that, more than 60 percent of college students have disturbed sleep/wake patterns and many regularly take drugs and alcohol to help them do one or the other.
The study of 1,125 students appears online in the Journal of Adolescent Health. It found that only 30 percent of students sleep at least eight hours a night — the average requirement for young adults.
On weeknights, 20 percent of students stay up all night at least once a month and 35 percent stay up until 3 a.m. at least once a week. Twelve percent of poor sleepers miss class three or more times a month or fall asleep in class.
Source: Health Behavior News Service
http://www.cfah.org/hbns/archives/getDocument.cfm?documentID=2098
