​​​​Is Sleep Good For Depression?

If a sadistic person wants to torture someone else and make him depressed, he might use a common torture technique and deprive his victim of sleep.

After all, even if he doesn’t understand the science behind the importance of restful sleep for overall well-being, he appreciates that people naturally tend to feel bad, down, stressed, fatigued, and depressed when they don’t get enough sleep each night.

Fortunately, the inverse is also true. When people get enough restful sleep, they tend to feel better and happier.

So learn from this: since a lack of restful can naturally make you feel bad and depressed, and since enjoying restful sleep helps you feel better and happier, be sure to enjoy plenty of sleep each night to become and remain depression-free.

The amount of recommended sleep varies according to who you ask. While 8 hours of sleep is a common recommendation, you might require more or less.

Ideally, aim for at least 7 hours of sleep every night, and appreciate that getting enough sleep is one of the most powerful things you can do to become and remain depression-free.

Am I depressed due to lack of sleep?

If you constantly feel tired and exhausted, you might think you feel this way because you’re depressed. However, an important insight is that feeling tired and exhausted contributes to you feeling depressed.

For this reason, don’t think of feeling tired as being a “symptom” of depression, which is a common mistake that many people make. Instead, appreciate that not feeling rested is a big factor that contributes to depression.

With this understanding in mind, make sure you get plenty of restful sleep each night which leaves you feeling more refreshed and energetic.

Doing so will help you become and remain depression-free faster and easier.

How does sleep help depression?

The better rested you are, the more you:

  • Enjoy greater energy
  • Find it easier to face life’s challenges
  • Enjoy greater clarity of mind (instead of a muddled, foggy mind)
  • Have better memory, concentration, and judgment
  • Have faster reaction times and better coordination
  • Enjoy a healthier and stronger immune system
  • Tend to feel better overall and be in a better mood
  • Find it easier to think positively and enjoy the benefits of positive thinking (feeling better overall makes it much easier to think more positively!)
  • Are naturally less depressed and a much happier person in every way as a result

Just think about it.

Whenever you wake up exhausted, after very little sleep, don’t you tend to naturally be more irritable, and find it a lot more challenging to get things done?

And if you’re consistently deprived of sleep, don’t you tend to feel awful? (Indeed, for this reason, sleep deprivation is considered an extreme form of torture, since it can make a person feel so miserable, awful, and depressed so quickly.)

Inversely, whenever you wake up fully refreshed and rested, after a great night’s sleep, don’t you tend to naturally be in a good mood, and find it much easier to get things done?

If so, you’ve already proven to yourself how a good night’s sleep has such a powerful impact on your happiness and success in life, and why it’s so important for eliminating depression.

The lesson: to become depression-free & stay depression-free, be sure to get plenty of sleep every night.

I sleep too much and feel depressed

Is it normal to sleep a lot when depressed?

Sure. Lots of people sleep a lot when they’re depressed, which is why excessive sleeping is often considered a sign of depression.

However, if you find yourself sleeping a lot when you’re depressed, be aware that getting tons of sleep is not the same as getting restful sleep that leaves you feeling more refreshed and energetic the next day.

For example, you can drink a lot of alcohol, and pass out and sleep a very long time, only to wake up feeling hungover and bad (in other words, you’ve slept a lot, and it hasn’t been restful or left you feeling better or happier).

So strive for restful sleep that is not disturbed by alcohol, caffeine, or stressful negative thoughts.

How sleep deprivation and depression are often connected

Remember, as always, what ultimately causes depression is your thinking. And one of the most powerful ways that negative thinking can make you depressed is by interfering with the quality of your sleep.

Stressful negative thoughts can leave you feeling perpetually exhausted, so that you sleep too much, and then still feel too tired to do anything. Or stressful negative thinking can keep you up and make you sleep deprived, which will also contribute to making you more depressed.

So be aware that if you’re depressed, you’re definitely thinking in stressful, negative ways that make you depressed, and that these types of stressful thoughts interfere with your peace of mind and therefore the quality of your sleep.

If you feel like you can’t sleep because of depression, the good news is that as you improve your thinking to stop being depressed, the quality of your sleep will also naturally improve, so you’ll enjoy more restful sleep each night.

Also, when you regularly get exercise, the quality of your sleep will naturally improve: so to enjoy restful sleep, it is important that you improve your thinking and lifestyle, so that you can enjoy sleep that leaves you feeling more refreshed and energetic each day.


Next: Why Seeing Symptoms Of Depression Makes You Depressed →


You are here:

Section 5 Lessons:

  1. How to get rid of negative thoughts and depression
  2. How to stop ruminating & dwelling on negative thoughts
  3. Can omega 3 help with depression?
  4. How does sunlight affect depression?
  5. Can exercise help depression?
  6. Does social interaction help depression?
  7. Is sleep good for depression?

Next Section In The Depression-Free Course:

Section 6


About the author

Hi, I'm Dave Fonvielle, the founder of Always Greater. On this website I teach you step by step how to be happier and more successful achieving your goals, whether it's completing a small personal to do task, like doing the dishes, or a large business goal, like launching a new product. Get my free 3 Tiny Habits for Being Happier & More Successful training for all of this right here.