Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and isn’t intended to diagnose, treat, or replace professional medical advice. If you experience persistent snoring or symptoms of sleep apnoea, please speak to a qualified healthcare professional.
Snoring often gets treated as a bit of a joke, something we laugh about or roll our eyes at, but it can be a sign of an underlying condition that’s doing far more damage than just disrupting the person next to you.
Sleep apnoea is one of the most underdiagnosed conditions around, and new research published in 2025 suggests it may be significantly driving poor mental health in millions of people1.
Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) happens when the muscles in the throat relax during sleep, causing the airway to narrow or close repeatedly through the night. Each time this happens, your body briefly rouses itself to reopen the airway – often without you ever fully waking up. The result is highly fragmented sleep, even if you technically spend eight hours in bed.
The condition affects roughly one billion adults worldwide, yet up to 90% of cases are thought to go undetected2. It doesn’t just affect how tired you feel, it has real, measurable consequences for your physical health, your cardiovascular system – and increasingly, your mental health.
A major study published in 2025 followed more than 30,000 adults aged 45 to 85 and found that people at high risk of OSA had around 40% higher odds of depression and other mental health conditions1. Even people with no existing mental health conditions at the start of the study were affected. Those at high risk of sleep apnoea were 44% more likely to develop mental health problems over time compared with those at lower risk1.
We also know that OSA is associated with increased risk across a range of psychiatric conditions, including depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia3. There’s also emerging evidence linking OSA to higher rates of suicidal ideation4.
So why does disrupted sleep have such a profound effect on mental wellbeing?
Part of the answer lies in what sleep apnoea actually does to the brain – repeated drops in oxygen, chronic sleep fragmentation, and activation of the stress response night after night. Over time, this creates the conditions for poor emotional regulation, low resilience, and persistent low mood.
The relationship between poor sleep and mental health is bidirectional – poor sleep makes mental health worse and poor mental health makes sleep worse.
Sleep apnoea has long been thought of as a condition that affects overweight, middle-aged men. That image has done enormous harm to the millions of women who have OSA and don’t know it.
Research consistently shows that women with OSA present differently to men. Rather than loud snoring and obvious pauses in breathing, the classic picture, women are more likely to describe persistent fatigue, restless sleep, morning headaches, poor concentration, and mood disturbance. These symptoms are easily attributed to stress, anxiety, or “just getting older,” and as a result, OSA in women is frequently missed or misdiagnosed.
This problem becomes particularly acute around menopause. Before the menopause transition, oestrogen and progesterone play an important role in maintaining muscle tone in the airway and regulating breathing during sleep. As these hormones decline, the upper airway becomes more collapsible and the risk of OSA rises sharply.
The result is that many women going through menopause who are struggling with fatigue, sleep fragmentation, low mood, and poor concentration, symptoms that could easily be attributed to the menopause itself, may actually be living with undiagnosed sleep apnoea. Or often, both at once.
There’s even a recognised clinical pattern called Comorbid Insomnia and Sleep Apnoea (COMISA), which is more common in women than men and linked to poorer health outcomes than either condition alone. The insomnia and sleep apnoea can reinforce one another, meaning treating just one condition may still leave the other underlying issue unresolved5.
If you feel that some of this rings true for you or someone you know, then there are some practical steps worth taking.
If you’re experiencing persistent fatigue, fragmented sleep, low mood, or any of the symptoms described here, raise the possibility of sleep apnoea explicitly. Given how commonly it’s missed in women, it’s worth naming it directly rather than leaving it to be inferred and you can ask for a referral to a specialist sleep disorder centre where they can assess this thoroughly.
OSA can now often be assessed at home using wearable devices, so it doesn’t necessarily require an overnight hospital stay. A diagnosis can also open the door to treatment – in moderate to severe cases, this often includes a CPAP machine, which maintains continuous airflow during sleep and can be genuinely life-changing for many people.
Whether or not sleep apnoea is part of the picture, CBT-I can be worth exploring if you’re struggling with insomnia or poor sleep quality. Your GP may be able to refer you, or you can access digital programmes independently.
If you’re spending long periods lying awake in bed, this is doing more harm than good. Working with a sleep specialist or CBT-I practitioner to consolidate your sleep and build your sleep drive is often more effective than adding more hours in bed.
We’ve made significant progress in understanding the link between physical and mental health, but sleep is often left out of the conversation – or treated as a symptom rather than a cause. The evidence is now clear that poor sleep, particularly untreated sleep apnoea, can have a major impact on mental health.
For women especially, the failure to recognise and diagnose OSA is contributing to a gap in care with real consequences for mental wellbeing, quality of life, and long-term physical health.
The good news is that this is a solvable problem. Effective treatments exist, and the cycle can be broken. But it starts with taking sleep seriously – not as a luxury or lifestyle issue, but as a fundamental pillar of health that deserves proper attention.
If you’ve been brushing off the snoring, constant tiredness, or low mood as “just part of life”, it may be worth asking a different question… what if improving your sleep could help improve everything else too?
Dr. Maja Schaedel, Sleep Expert & Clinical Psychologist, Director of The Good Sleep Clinic
If you’re concerned about your sleep and mental health, speak to your GP. If you’re experiencing a mental health crisis, contact Samaritans on 116 123 (free, 24/7) or visit samaritans.org
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