Michael Grandner, who runs the Sleep and Health Research Program in the UArizona’s department of psychiatry, said he has seen a great number of people with sleep problems this year.
“With everything going on during the day, they have a real hard time disconnecting,” he said.
Grandner, who also sees patients at the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Clinic at Banner Health, said insomnia occurs on a spectrum.
“So there’s insomnia, I would say with a lowercase ‘i’, which is just sort of the experience of being unable to sleep sometimes,” he said, adding that many people deal with insomnia at some point in their life.
“Then there’s the line into what we call insomnia disorder, which is actually a diagnosable medical condition that usually does not go away on its own once you meet criteria for it.”
Grandner said if it takes more than 30 minutes to fall asleep for at least three nights a week, and if the pattern has been ongoing for months, you may have insomnia.
Nightmares can do double damage, said Denise Rodriguez, a clinical psychologist who specializes in behavioral sleep medicine to treat insomnia at Banner Health.
“Typically, for a lot of folks who do struggle with nightmare disorders, it’s not just that they’re having a nightmare, but that the nightmare prevents them from going back to sleep,” Rodriguez said.