It’s not surprising that many of the parents of self-harming young people that we help have problems sleeping. The stress, anxiety and worries about the future play on their minds and eat into their sleep.

Parents either tell us that they struggle to fall asleep or have restless sleep full of troubling dreams which mirrors their mental and emotional state.

Either way it’s so much harder to be calm, positive, patient, optimistic when your craving an opportunity to crawl into bed.

But how much sleep do we ACTUALLY NEED?

It’s commonly thought that 8 hours of sleep a night is the magic number.

And the evidence shows this is correct,

In one of many experiments, researchers took study participants into a laboratory with no sunlight or clocks and, at night, gave them nine-hour-long opportunity to sleep. The results were always the same: even when provided with more time, humans will typically spend an average of eight hours catching up on their Zzz.

So what happens...