Results show that sleep timing and maintenance problems in college students are a strong predictor of academic problems even after controlling for other factors that contribute to academic success, such as clinical depression, feeling isolated, and diagnosis with a learning disability or chronic health issue. The study also found that sleep problems have about the same impact on grade point average (GPA) as binge drinking and marijuana use<\/strong>. Its negative impact on academic success is more pronounced for freshmen. Among first-year students, poor sleep — but not binge drinking, marijuana use or learning disabilities diagnosis — independently predicted dropping or withdrawing from a course. Results were adjusted for potentially confounding factors such as race, gender, work hours, chronic illness, and psychiatric problems such as anxiety.<\/p>\n “Well-rested students perform better academically and are healthier physically and psychologically<\/strong>,” said investigators Roxanne Prichard, PhD, associate professor of psychology and Monica Hartmann, professor of economics at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.<\/p>\n The research abstract was published recently in an online supplement of the journal Sleep<\/em> and was presented Tuesday, June 3, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at SLEEP 2014, the 28th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC.<\/p>\n Data from the Spring 2009 American College Health Association National College Health Assessment (NCHA) were analyzed to evaluate factors that predict undergraduate academic problems including dropping a course, earning a lower course grade and having a lower cumulative GPA. Responses from over 43,000 participants were included in the analysis.<\/p>\n According to Prichard, student health information about the importance of sleep is lacking on most university campuses<\/strong>.<\/p>\n “Sleep problems are not systematically addressed in the same way that substance abuse problems are,” she said. “For colleges and universities, addressing sleep problems early in a student’s academic career can have a major economic benefit through increased retention.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) media release: A new study shows that college students who are poor sleepers are much more likely to earn worse grades and… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[345,319,339,4,43,346],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16868"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16868"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16874,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16868\/revisions\/16874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"teen](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/teen-study.jpg\")
<\/a>A new study shows that college students who are poor sleepers are much more likely to earn worse grades and withdraw from a course<\/strong> than healthy sleeping peers.<\/p>\n