According to research by Wuhan University 55.7% of Chinese college students feel sleepy during the day and 11.4% of them are facing severe sleeping difficulties.
Heavy academic pressures could be partly responsible for the sleep problems while noisy dormitories have been identified as the cause of many difficulties with 47% of students complaining about this.
The majority of students encountering sleep problems know very little about how to deal with it and it seems they don't feel it's necessary to seek help from doctors.
And this is despite the fact that insufficient sleep is affecting their stamina, lifestyle and even interpersonal relations. Some of them are drinking less tea and coffee but it seems this has been ineffective.
Lack of sleep has become one of the most important public health problems in China and it's been long neglected. Previous statistics have shown that as many as 43% of Chinese suffer from this.
(Chinanews.cn January 24, 2007)