> > The Ugly: I think acknowledging the mental health crises among many kids is a good step, but I don't think you're going to really fix anybody who might be i

> > The Ugly: I think acknowledging the mental health crises among many kids is a good step, but I don't think you're going to really fix anybody who might be in a danger zone by telling them that they have the option to wake up a bit later. I sincerely doubt that a sleep deficit is the issue that inspires extremely negative life-threatening behavior among anybody. Lack of sleep can easily exacerbate symptoms of what might be transient or mild mental illness, and allow them to develop into chronic problems with the potential for acute breakdowns. There are some antidepressants that are on the market that are speculated to work not from their specific actions on neurotransmitters, like how SSRIs are hypothesized to work, but from the fact that they help with disordered sleep. They help with sleep by increasing the length of time the patient sleeps each night, and there's a correlation with getting sufficient sleep and reduction in symptoms of mental illness like depression, and symptoms like stress and anxiety, along with other illness like anxiety disorders and what not. In its most extreme, lack of sufficient sleep over time can even trigger transient psychosis in otherwise mentally sound people. For those with predispositions for psychotic illness, sleep deficits can bring those symptoms to the surface, while someone who has those same predispositions and gets sufficient amounts sleep might never actually experience them ever in their lives. I think this is important for psychotic disorders specifically, as they usually present in early adolescence, so reducing factors that can exacerbate them is important. Psychotic disorders can and do ruin lives, however the severity of those disorders decreases the longer someone goes without experiencing them. A 17 year old with a predisposition for schizophrenia-related disorders who doesn't experience psychosis early on could very likely never experience those symptoms later in life, and live a normal life. That same person who does experience those symptoms, perhaps triggered by sleep deprivation, might walk away with a chronic condition that's expensive, significantly lowers their potential lifespan, and can be utterly disabling. tl;dr: the amount of sleep, and types of sleep, really do matter when it comes to mental health