How Does Lack Of Sleep Affect Behavior?

We all know that we don't feel "quite right" when we haven't had enough sleep or even worse if we're suffering from an actual sleep disorder. Not getting enough sleep can and does affect your behaviour - in a lot of different ways. Some people don't really exhibit any outward changes - they just don't feel well. Other people will, however, exhibit behavior and symptoms that could quickly concern their family and friends.

If you haven't gotten enough sleep for several days then it can start to affect your brain and any behaviors that are controlled by the brain. The person could start experiencing emotional changes, problems with their physical behavior and an increase in personality traits that are more negative than is normal. The effects of sleep derprivation on the person will vary from one person to the next.

One of the emotional changes that becomes most obvious is that a person deprived of sleep will become far more irritable and lack the kind of patience they usually have. The person might become argumentative for no apparent reason and just become very difficult to deal with or be around for any length of team.

When you don't get enough sleep it can quickly affect your ability to concentrate and think in a logical way. You'll notice this at first with children in school who haven't had enough sleep - they can't focus on anything and any tests taken in this state result in very poor scores.

Adults who don't get enough sleep suffer from the same problems - unable to focus, becoming forgetful, irritable, angry and not being able to think straight. A huge amount of road accidents are down to people falling asleep behind the wheel or simply not paying attention to what they're doing.

Sleep deprivation can also result in the person appearing confused or disoriented. They act and move like a person who has had too much to drink or has been taking intoxicating drugs. Precise movements are difficult to perform and dizziness can occur when standing or moving too quickly. The longer the lack of sleep occurs, the worse the person will be because the brain is getting more and more tired. This causes the person’s reaction time to decrease with each passing day and this is when accidents are most likely to occur.

After several days of sleep deprivation the mental and emotional centers start to break down and the person will start to experience hallucinations and an inability to even read a childrens story book. Holding a basic conversation will become incredibly difficuly and the persons short term memory will be badly affected. I once drove home during a bout of insomnia and have absolutely no recollection of the drive home - that was scary for a lot of reasons!

At this stage the person is close to psychosis and a mental breakdown and medical intervention is needed immediately.

Even just one good nights sleep can be enough to "cure" the effects of lack of sleep on the human body.