Anxiety and depression affect sleep differently — expert explains why and how to cope

A man wearing a grey tshirt sitting on bed of bed in beige room with his head in his hands as he struggles to sleep with anxiety and depression.

Mental health and sleep go hand in hand. Not getting enough sleep can generally lower your mood anyway, but people dealing with anxiety and depression particularly find it hard to get consistently good quality sleep. 

While anxiety is often associated with insomnia and sleep deprivation, depression is associated with over sleeping, sleep inertia and, in some cases, insomnia too. This World Mental Health Day, we asked Dr Lindsay Browning, chartered psychologist and founder of sleep issue clinic Trouble Sleeping, how sleep is affected by anxiety and by depression, how they each hit sleep differently, and why.