ATOK, Geli

BORJA, Janine
11 St. Julian of Norwich
Research: Review of Related Literature
There are many factors that affect insomnia which is why it is not easy to come up with
the conclusion that a person has insomnia if the case has not been thoroughly studied. Insomnia
may be common to a lot of individuals, however, experts still debate whether a certain person
has acquired this sleeping disorder legitimately or not.
According to Edinger (2008), there are two types of insomnia: secondary insomnia,
which is comorbid with another disorder whether it be chronic pain conditions, psychiatric
conditions or cardiopulmonary conditions. Primary insomnia, on the other hand, is insomnia that
is not comorbid with any other condition.
Like every other sleep disorder, insomnia is influenced by various circumstances for it to
arise.According to Pinel (2000), several cases of insomnia are said to be iatrogenic or caused by
attempted medical treatment. Physicians do have good intentions whenever they prescribe
hypnotic drugs for increasing the amount of sleep the individual gets. However, when the patient
starts to develop tolerance to the drug and consumes more of it to increase its effectiveness,
paradoxically, the individual experiences withdrawal symptoms, including insomnia.
Another cause of insomniain terms of initiating sleep is the pressure to sleep more.
According to Pinel (2011), Many people normally sleep 6 hours or less a night and seem to do
well sleeping that amount, but they are pressured by others to sleep more. As a result they spend
more time in bed than they should and have difficulty getting to sleep (p. 375). The anxiety that
comes with the pressure of getting more sleep makes it even more difficult for the individual to
go to sleep.
As mentioned earlier, a cause of insomnia in terms of maintaining sleep may be
influenced by another disorder. Chung (2005) found that some people who were diagnosed with
sleep apnea syndrome (OSA) or having shallow breaths during sleepalso complained of
experiencing insomnia. It still is being studied on what may be the cause of insomnia in OSA,
but specialists in sleep disorders have hypothesized that the difficulty in sleep maintenance was
due to breathing problems.
Nightmare disorder, a sleep disorder characterized by frequently having nightmares, may
also initiate insomnia. Breus (2014) says that intense and distressing dreams often lead to
waking at night and can create anxiety about returning to sleep. It is part of universal

knowledge that anxiety makes it harder for the individual to go back to the sleeping state, which
makes insomnia comorbid with the nightmare disorder.
Insomnia also usually coexists with depression. Insomnia may be a symptom of
depression, and depression may be a symptom of insomnia. Whether or not an individual
experienced depression first, it was agreed upon that, the duration of insomnia positively
correlates with duration and frequency of depressive episodes (Gupta &Lahan, 2011).
*Support points of psychosomatic insomnia
New research suggests that an individual can experience insomnia and still get an
adequate amount of sleep. Petersen (2015) found the following: Insomnia is less about the
amount of sleep and more about what the brain does during sleep. It is found that in people with
insomnia, parts of the brain known as the default mode network are more active during sleep,
compared with normal sleepers. Insomnia is not the problem of too little sleep; it is the problem
of too much brain activation. To support this statement, Levitt (1981) found an observation
wherein as measured by the electroencephalogram, the insomniacs in the conducted study were
asleep but their restorative benefits from sleep were fewer, thus, they might have even felt that
they were awake.

*Effects of insomnia, including when it is untreated

*Conclusion