The causes include stress, worries, frantic schedules, medical problems, children, poor sleep environments, and noisy or restless bedmates. Middle-aged people usually fall asleep easily, but they wake up repeatedly during the night. Younger people tend to have difficulty falling asleep to begin with, sleep experts say. Persistent insomnia, which occurs a couple of times a week or several times a month. Chronic insomnia, which varies widely in duration and severity.
Some sufferers are sleepless every night for months or years.
Others have two bad weeks a month. The major factors producing chronic insomnia are depression and anxiety. Other common causes are medical disorders such as arthritis, cardiovascular illness and restless legs syndrome. Insomnia can become circular. After several nights of poor sleep, a person may get so worried about not sleeping that the insomnia takes on a life of its own, says David Neubauer, associate director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.