Douglas Institute researcher teaches the benefits of a few more ZZZs.

Most people know that sleep deprivation is one of the main causes of crankiness, moodiness and increased stress, yet as our society gains momentum in the “busyness” sector, this common-sense piece of knowledge becomes increasingly ignored. One Douglas Institute researcher is taking back common sense and scientific evidence and teaching the importance of sleep, starting with some of our youngest members of society: elementary school students.

“We know from facts and studies that children have been sleeping less and less and we know that sleep deprivation affects a lot of things,” says Dr. Gruber, who holds a PhD in psychology and who has expertise in pediatric sleep. “One thing that is affected is academic performance. Studies have shown that sleep is very much involved in learning and memory. Specifically, sleep after learning is necessary because some of the processing of information is done during the sleep period.”

“Less sleep” trend deleterious

Reut Gruber worries about the “less sleeping” trend. “Often, parents today do not make sleep a priority in their busy lives. They think it’s better to have their kids in many activities without understanding that by having more things to do and less time to sleep they are actually working against what they are trying to achieve.”

For quite some time it has been clear to Gruber that this attitude needs adjusting. So two years ago she created a mission for herself: to get the word out about the critical role of sleeping. And she knew the message had to be sent to parents, children and teachers. “I tackled this mission by starting with a pilot project, which I worked on with Gail Somerville, Chake Berberian, Enzo Diloia, and Elizabeth Gilles-Poitras from the Riverside school board,” says Gruber. “We put together a curriculum to teach children about sleep, specifically why it is important to get sleep, to give advice on how to manage sleep better, and to teach a little about what science is and how to conduct research.”

Gruber and her research assistants Dan Brouillette and Dana Sheshko started off with one session, which expanded to a few, which then expanded to another school. “Our pilot project ended up being integrated into a science program of another school in the same school board,” she says. “When I saw that it was helping kids become more aware and they were enjoying it we decided to apply for a “Knowledge to Action” grant, which is part of the Knowledge Transfer branch of Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). This grant encourages collaboration with the community, where one Primary Investigator (PI) comes from research and the other from the community.”

With Gruber as the research PI and Gail Somerville, Director of Special Services at the Riverside school board, as the community PI, and four other members from the school board (three principles of elementary schools and one school psychologist) the grant was applied for and
accepted.

Research grant paves the way for “sleep education”

With the grant in hand, their action plan was clear: to expand the pilot project data to develop a curriculum that would eventually be implemented into the health curriculum of all Quebec elementary schools, and potentially across Canada. And then to expand this and create another version of the program designed for high school students and Aboriginal communities. To launch the project, Gruber and her team – Eva Monson, the project coordinator, Nikki Amirlatifi, Dan brouillette, Zoe Schwartz, Erika Kleiderman and others – targeted four different audiences: students, parents, teachers and staff, and policy makers.

“For each of these domains we have established subcommittees where we have people from the community and the research side working together to develop relevant material,” says Gruber. “This includes forming focus groups, with the help of Michel Perreault, PhD, a Douglas researcher, to learn what people already know about sleep and to see what we call the barriers to sleep so we can identify what we should be working on. Then based on this information, we are putting together a new curriculum that will address our findings.”

Currently in Quebec there exists a health curriculum that covers topics that the government deems important for kids, some are mandatory, some are not. They include things like physical activity, nutrition, and sexual education. Recently, Gruber met with the Ministry of Health and they are now going through the necessary steps required to eventually integrate the “sleep” program into this existing health curriculum.

Strides are also being made toward creating similar programs for the high school and in Aboriginal groups, in collaboration with Ann Macaulay, MD and Jonathan Salsberg, MA, from the Participatory Research at McGill (PRAM, Department of Family Medicine).

Sleep deprivation a serious issue, but very treatable

According to Gruber, sleep is very central in many aspects of mental health. “Many of the psychiatric diseases like depression, anxiety, ADHD, have sleep as a major symptom,” she says. “At the same time we know sleep deprivation in people with no official problem will also lead to
mental issues. Crankiness, moodiness and increased stress—all of these are often the direct result from lack of sleep. The fact is mental health and sleep go hand in hand.”

And in addition to affecting a child’s academic performance, sleep deprivation in children will cause the same symptoms as a child with ADHD, including short attention span, switching from happy to crying very quickly (emotional regulation is affected very dramatically), and the inability to be patient. It is also known that many kids with ADHD suffer from sleep problems, proving that the two are interrelated.

“The good news is, sleep is very treatable,” says Gruber. “The fact is we know that sleep and sleep deprivation have a huge impact on humans and so the fact that there is the potential to help improve sleep is very appealing to me as a clinician and as a researcher.” But at the end of the day, Reut Gruber and her team have one objective right now: to optimize and improve performance and academic success in the children of Quebec and possibly across the nation. “I know we can make a difference” she says."