With sleep disturbances afflicting at least half of children with autism, such bedtime horror stories are common in households such as the Bennetts’. Bramli, for example, often gets out of bed and climbs about in her closet, and her parents have to tuck her back in six or eight times before she finally goes down sometime between 10:30 p.m.
Each night, it takes hours for the two to fall asleep. Their brood of four includes Bramli and 7-year-old Ryker, who also has autism. It was worth it to Bennett and her husband if it could possibly bring some peace to their evenings. “But at the same time, when you’re looking at a life of never sleeping, day in and day out, it’s worth it in the end.” “None of us like to have our children be uncomfortable for any reason,” Bennett says. The girl’s mother, Haley Bennett, went all out to distract her with treats that were normally off limits after dinner: lollipops, soda and play time on the Nintendo and mini iPad.Įventually, the girl quieted, sulking on her bed as she watched YouTube music videos. Just putting all the monitoring equipment on her was no small feat.īramli wriggled, whimpered, moaned and sobbed as two Stanford University researchers gently cajoled her through the hook-up process. But Bramli, who has severe autism and is nonverbal, is an energetic, trampoline-loving whirlwind who doesn’t often sit still for long. The girl was about to undergo an evaluation that would track her brainwaves, eye movements, heart, muscle activity and breathing as she slept. Crowning her head was a snug black spandex cap studded with electrodes connected to black wires that bunched together and ran down her back. A 5-year-old with curly brown hair, Bramli was dressed in pink-and-green pajamas and rigged from head to toe with more than 20 sensors. on a warm June evening, daylight was fading outside her home in Morgan Hill, California. “Often, people are hyper-aroused, so they would love to nap but they can’t.Bramli was giving the stink eye to the grown-ups in her room, shooting resentful glances their way. “Depression is less likely to result in daytime sleepiness,” Zak said. Rochelle Zak, a sleep medicine specialist at the University of California San Francisco Sleep Disorders Center. Most often, clinical depression is connected to some form of insomnia, said Dr. A 'depression nap' may not mean you’re depressed. A 2012 study published in the journal Sleep found sleep disturbances like snorting and stopping breathing were strongly associated with incidence of major depression. She noted these disturbances can take a variety of forms, including insomnia, an inability to fall asleep, a tendency to wake up during the night or a tendency to feel worse in the morning upon rising.Īccording to Harvard Medical School, a variety of studies indicate that between 65 to 90 percent of adult patients with major depression experience some type of sleep problem. Weissman, a professor of epidemiology and psychiatry at Columbia University, told TODAY. “Disturbance in sleep is a cardinal symptom of depression,” Myrna M.
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