Diagnosing Sleep Disorders

For many people, sleep is a welcome end to a long day. We climb into our beds to restore our energy and prepare us for the day to come. It is so vital, in fact, that the average person will spend a third of their life sleeping. Most of us have experienced trouble sleeping at one time or another, but for some individuals, the difficulty can become habitual, causing significant distress in an individual's life. The challenges can come from difficulty falling or staying asleep, intense nightmares, breathing issues, or the effects of a substance or medication. They can even continue into the day, affecting or interrupting an individual's wakeful period. In these cases, the individual may have a sleep disorder, also called a sleep-wake disorder, which may negatively affect every aspect of the individual's life. This course examines non-organic insomnia; non-organic hypersomnia; narcolepsy; sleep disorders related to breathing (such as obstructive sleep apnoea); circadian rhythm sleep-wake disorders; physical, behavioural, and emotional sleep-related events (such as sleep walking and nightmares), and sleep disturbance caused by a substance or medication. <p>&nbsp;</p> <b>DSM-5-TR update:</b> While this video discusses mental conditions in terms of how the diagnosis would be treated in the DSM-5, the current iteration of the DSM is the DSM-5-TR. However, the clinical material discussed in this video is still current.