Biological Considerations in Mental Health



Title: Joseph H. Flaherty, MD, Insomnia among Hospitalized Older Persons, Clin Geriatr Med 24 (2008) 51-67

The purpose of this study is to find out the main causes which lead to insomnia in older people who are in hospitals. Sleeping is important and its importance is clearly indicated by the impacts that are produced by lack of sleeping. It can cause abnormal healing of damaged tissues, reduced immunity and abnormal protein synthesis (Flaherty, 2008). It is also evident that more than 50% of the psychological disorders are due to disturbance in sleeping pattern (Spira, Aulakh & Sheikh, 2012). Lack of sleeping can imbalance the level of nitrogen in the body (Parthasarathy &Tobin, 2012). In this article the author has only written the literature review of the research which has been written with a broad prospectus. The weakness of the report is that the author has made use of many older researches which cannot be useful because new researches are also available. The author has also completely explained the causes of Insomnia and the future interventions of the disease. I have selected this article because it completely describes the condition of insomnia in older people. According to the author the causes of insomnia can be divided into two categories which are intrinsic and extrinsic causes. The intrinsic causes of the disease can be the changes in sleep pattern and environment disturbance. Sometimes the patients are not able to sleep because of illness and the people who are suffering with the problem of sun downing (Flaherty, 2008). This point can be verified by another study which indicates that the sleep problems are common in the older people because of medical reasons. The medical reasons can be arthritic and neuropathic pain, obstructive sleep apnea, peripheral vascular disease, nocturia and cramps (Spira, Aulakh & Sheikh, 2012). Another study states that insomnia produces negative impacts on life of elderly people and it is also have a relationship in a bidirectional way with medical problems (Schwarz, Frolich & Deuschle 2010). The author has also specially focused on the intensive care unit department of the hospital and indicated that the people who are in the ICU are not able to have a proper sleep because it is the noisiest place of the hospital (Flaherty, 2008). The above point is also supported by a study which indicates that the patients who are severely ill can awake more easily than the normal people. The 20% of the patients in the department of intensive care remain awake because of noise (Parthasarathy &Tobin, 2012). It is the responsibility of a nurse to take care of the patients in the hospital. The nurses should take care of the older people. The study states that sleep is the main component which can help to maintain the quality of life and health and it is the responsibility of a nurse to prevent the sleep disturbances that are caused due to different reasons in the hospitals and the nurse should help ...