| I think you're not 100% wrong - it was chronic sleep deprivation. Where the Autism comes in, though, is that a young person on the spectrum won't know how to recognise internal signs that they need to sleep, possibly won't even understand that they need to sleep (unless they've explicitly read/been told about sleep health/hygeine), and likely have difficulty sleeping as is. The net result is, where a neurotypical person would just realise the early warning signs and slow down/go to bed earlier, the Autistic person can literally continue to ruin their mental health for a decade or more without ever putting two and two together. The reason I specifically mentioned the Autism rather than the sleep deprivation is that this failing to meet needs can occur in many aspects of one's life and present itself in weird ways. You might see Autistics socially isolate themselves for years on end, then assume that the reason they're plagued with depression and anxiety is because they're not getting laid. > Like if they could sleep a lot and go camping in nature with not many people and not many expectations for a month and avoid overstimulation, would a lot of these problems clear then? Do you have a kid in a situation like this? Getting away from technology would probably be an effective treatment temporarily, but you'd need to follow it up with solid, rigorous information about sleep hygeine and its importance. |
Poor sleep leads to worse stress regulation (also in neurotypical people), and chronic stress leads to difficulties in situational and bodily awareness, which leads to poor sleep hygiene, which reinforces the stress regulation problems, rinse and repeat until your life is in ruins.