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Article: A full night's sleep? Dream on... Insomnia is now our most common mental health problem by far, believed to affect more than one in 10 Britons. But what is behind this apparent epidemic - and what can we do to beat it? Julia Llewellyn Smith examines a very modern misery
- Article from:
- The Sunday Telegraph London
- Article date:
- December 16, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2007 The Sunday Telegraph London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Last night was the same as every night for Violet Bailey. She
went to bed at 10pm. Dizzy with exhaustion after 19 hours awake, she
quickly fell asleep. Some time around 1am, she was woken by the
sound of her husband's taxi pulling up next to the house. "Then he
came in and got into bed and started snoring and that was it. I was
wide awake fuming until it was 7am and time to get up for the kids,"
she says.
Like millions of Britons, Bailey, a 39-year-old mother of two
from north London, is a chronic insomniac. For as long as she can
remember she has existed on about four hours' sleep a night. "I
always wake between one and three and after that I just catnap," she
says. "It means I feel rough ...