Serious mental illness such as depression or schizophrenia, may distrupt sleep. A problem of not being able to fall asleep until 3 or 4 a.m. and than having trouble getting out of bed in the morning. This is particularly hard on the parents who complain they must take on the added responsibility of dragging their youngster out of bed. Adults with this problem frequently benefit from delaying bedtime further by two or three hours each day. They move entirely around the clock until they reach a desired bedtime.
Teens often do well with a weekend crash treatment.
If they stay up all night on Friday, and stay awake all day Saturday, they should feel sleepy enough Saturday night to fall asleep around midnight. Then they must get up Sunday at the time they would ordinarily awaken for school. From then on, they need to adhere to the same bedtimes and waketimes, seven days a week. Narcolepsy Teens with narcolepsy show sleepiness far beyond that of a typical sleepy teenager. They experience uncontrollable attacks of sleep several times a day, bizarre auditory or visual hallucinations as they are falling asleep.