Sleep, Mood, and Emotion

Adequate sleep is essential for healthy development and shares a particularly intimate relationship with emotional well-being. Nonetheless, many youths do not obtain enough sleep, hence placing themselves at risk of emotional problems. The entry gives a brief overview of sleep in pediatric populations, including the occurrence of normative developmental changes in sleep and methods for assessing sleep difficulties, and reviews the associations between sleep and emotion, including relations with affective disorders (e.g., anxiety and mood disorders), various emotional processes (e.g., emotional experiences, emotion regulation), and the neurophysiological sleep mechanisms that may underlie these associations. Finally, treatments for pediatric sleep difficulties, along with unexplored domains and questions in this area, are discussed. The associations between sleep and affective functioning hold important implications for clinical practice and policy.