Adolescent Sleep Patterns: Biological, Social, and Psychological Influences

Rating:
Summary: WAKE UP
Review: This book should be a "must" read for all health care professionals who deal with adolescents. It should be a "must" read for all school adminitrators, teachers, and counsellors. There is a physiologic reason teenagers have trouble falling asleep at night and a physiologic reason they have trouble waking up in the morning. One only wonders how much poor performanc in school, teenage depression, and teenage accidents are due to poor societal understanding of sleep physiology in adolescents. This book addresses these issues.

The book makes the very strong point that teenagers may not have as much control over their sleep patterns, especially when one takes into account the societal pressures of early school start times, after-school activities, after-school work responsibilites, and homework. A novel approach to this problem which results in later high school start times appears to be one very effective solution, which is well presented in this volume

Dr. Carskadon, the world's leading expert on adolescent sleep, has assembled an internationally recognized group of authors in this very informative book. It is extraordinarily well written, consistently edited, and is packed with information that should be valuable to the layman as well as to the sleep professional.

This book should be read by every physician, nurse practitioner, physician's assistant, psychologist, social scientist, school counsellor, school adminitrator, school board member, parent, and teacher in the country.