Plight Of The Teenage Insomniacs

Newsweek, April, 2008 by Claudia Kalb

Rachel Estrella, A high-school senior in Barrington, R.I., gets into bed every night before 10, hoping to beat her insomnia. One frustrating hour later, she gets up. She reads. She writes. She waits. Finally, at 1 or 2 a.m., Estrella’s mind and body give in. On average, she gets four to five hours of sleep a night—nowhere near the nine recommended for teens. “I’m exhausted,” she says. “There are times when I feel like I want to be knocked out because there would be some relief.”

Plenty of kids have trouble getting up for early-morning school bells. Teen insomniacs have it much worse. Night after night, they struggle to sleep; day after day, they suffer. In a new study published in March in the Journal of Adolescent Health, researchers report that insomnia in adolescents is...

Read the full article with a Free Trial at MyWire.

Premium Content Partnership | MyWire provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.