Sleep Quality Among University Stud

Sleep Quality Among University Students
Students’ poor sleep habits and consequent poor sleep quality can have many mental, as well as physiological consequences. Students who spend their night getting one to two hours of less sleep have a tendency to accumulate a “sleep debt” which leads to excessive daytime sleepiness (Voelker, 2004; Teter, 2006). Deprivation of sleep to less than six to seven hours per day can lead to serious impairment of cognitive and psychomotor function(reduces concentration, memory and thinking strategies), daytime dysfunction, increased incidence of sleep related accidents (Teter, 2006; Banks, 2007; Brown, 2002), and diminished academic performance, often resulting in poor grades (Teter, 2006; Smith, 2005; Tsai, 2004).
It was noticed that students experiencing sleep deprivation try to avoid more difficult tasks (Trockel, 2009). Also, they often are not aware that the difficulties they are have academicallycan be directly relatedto their poor sleep quality (Engle-Friedman, 2003) and might get depressed about someone with a lower cognitive ability scoring better on a test than them, due to the fact that the latter had a better night’s sleep. This would explain the commonly heard comment, “I can’t understand why I did so badly, I spent all the previous day studying” (Engle-Friedman, 2003; Pilcher, 1997).