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Narcolepsy is a chronic condition that effects the sleep-wake cycles. Sleep is crucial for physical, emotional wellbeing and cognitive functioning, so narcolepsy impacts many parts of a persons life.
Narcolepsy significantly impacts on the quality of night-time sleep leading to excessive daytime sleepiness. Some young people also experience hallucinations and cataplexy. Some people also experience micro-sleeps which impair concentration, focus and processing. Automatic behaviours may disguise the true level of wakefulness.
The urge to sleep is very powerful and can happen even in stimulating situations like walking and riding a bike. Triggers include:
Sleepiness can vary through the school day, depending on the timing of naps and medications.
Is a momentary loss of muscle tone and comes in the form of:
Cataplexy can happen without a cause, but is often brought about by strong emotions the main ones being surprise, laughter and fear.
It can also happen during sport. Recovery is quick, usually within seconds. It is important to be mindful that safety is a concern during a cataplexy attack.
Automatic behaviour means someone may appear to be concentrating or studying when in fact they are not. They are unaware that this is happening. For example, they have doodled or carried on writing something that does not make sense. Sometimes teenagers may appear to be awake when they are in fact having a ‘micro sleep’. They often will not recognise that they have been asleep.
This means extremely fractured, poor night time sleep. A person with narcolepsy has a very different sleep structure to someone without the condition.
It is common to experience nightmares and hallucinations going into sleep and coming out of sleep. This can be extremely frightening as the experiences can be very vivid. This poor night time sleep contributes to excessive sleepiness the next day.
In some instances, excessive sleepiness may present as children not paying attention in class, being distracted, fidgeting and disruptive.
Teenagers may also present as lacking motivation. This is likely to impact their ability to engage in more sedentary learning and retain information. They are expected to be in charge of their own learning more with, working independently, working on longer pieces of homework, revision, and so on.
It can impact a teenager’s ability to begin tasks by themselves, and persevere to complete tasks. Their frustration tolerance will be affected meaning they may be reluctant to ‘have a go’ with challenging tasks or keep going when things are not working out.
Excessive sleepiness can impact on someone’s social relationships. They may lack motivation or energy to socialise.
The condition has a direct impact on the part of the brain that regulates emotional responses (the hypothalamus). Research has shown that people with narcolepsy are more likely to have difficulty regulating mood than the general population.
People can experience feeling ‘different’ to their peers due to the overt symptoms of the condition and management strategies such as naps at school, fidgeting, impulsivity, automatic behaviours.
Further possible impact on learning including:
Cognitive impacts of excessive daytime sleepiness and cataplexy may be further effected by co-occurring mental health difficulties, neurodivergence (such as autism and ADHD), and other personal stressors.
Young people may benefit from some of the following:
Please note: this is a generic information sheet relating to care at Sheffield Children’s NHS FT. These details may not reflect treatment at other hospitals. This information is not intended as a substitute for professional medical care. Always follow your healthcare professionals’ instructions. If this resource relates to medicines, please read it alongside the medicine manufacturer’s patient information leaflet. If this information has been translated into another language from English, efforts have been made to maintain accuracy, but there may still be some translation errors. If you are unsure about any of the guidance in this resource or have specific questions about how it relates to your child, always ask your healthcare professional for further advice.
Resource number: PSY32
Resource Type: Article
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