Sleep disturbance

Nearly everyone who suffers from depression experiences changes in their sleep. You might experience the changes as

• having difficulty falling asleep
• sleeping less in total
• never feeling refreshed
• sleeping shallowly
• waking several times during the night
• waking up early in the mornings
• having an increased number of sleeping cycles
• getting disturbed by the so-called REM sleep, which is one of the sleeping phases you normally go through one or more times during your sleep. Recent research indicates that REM sleep among other things has an effect on memory and learning.

In an atypical depression, it is the other way around: here you sleep more than you normally do.