Understanding sleep apnoea
In obstructive sleep apnoea the airway collapses repeatedly during sleep. Breathing pauses, oxygen falls, and the brain briefly wakes to restart it. This can happen dozens of times an hour without the person remembering any of it.
The result is a full night in bed and none of the restoration sleep is supposed to provide. Daytime exhaustion, irritability, poor concentration and low mood follow — which is precisely why it is so often treated as depression or burnout first. Antidepressants do not open an airway.
It is diagnosed with a sleep study, not a questionnaire, and treated medically. We include it here because recognising it is the whole battle: people typically spend years being told to manage their stress better.
Signs to look for
Everyone experiences some of these sometimes. What matters is how many, how long, and how much they interfere with your life.
What a partner notices
- Loud, habitual snoring, often night after night
- Pauses in breathing, then a gasp, snort or choke
- Restlessness and frequent position changes
- Sleeping better in a chair or propped up than lying flat
What you notice
- Waking unrefreshed however long you were in bed
- Falling asleep unintentionally — in meetings, watching television, at traffic lights
- Morning headache, dry mouth or sore throat
- Needing to urinate several times a night
- Low mood and short temper that no amount of rest fixes
When to seek help
You do not need to be in crisis to deserve support. Consider speaking to someone if:
- Anyone has witnessed you stop breathing in your sleep — see a doctor, not a therapist
- You have fallen asleep, or nearly fallen asleep, while driving
- You have been treated for depression or fatigue without improvement and have never had your sleep investigated
- You have high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes or atrial fibrillation alongside heavy snoring
What helps
A sleep study, first
Diagnosis needs measurement — either an overnight study or a home test your doctor arranges. Nothing else here substitutes for it, and no app can tell you whether you have apnoea.
Medical treatment
Usually CPAP, which holds the airway open with gentle air pressure. Some people are suited to a dental device or to surgery. This is your doctor’s decision, not ours, and we do not advise on it.
Support with actually using the treatment
CPAP works and many people abandon it in the first fortnight. Adjustment is largely behavioural — claustrophobia, self-image, a partner’s reaction — and that part we can help with.
Treating what it left behind
Years of exhaustion tend to leave low mood, strained relationships and lost confidence at work. Once breathing is treated, those often still need attention.
Common questions
Can therapy treat sleep apnoea?
No. It is a physical airway problem and needs medical treatment. Therapy can help you stick with that treatment, and can address the depression and relationship strain that years of exhaustion cause, but it cannot fix the breathing itself.
I am not overweight. Can I still have it?
Yes. Weight raises the risk but plenty of people with apnoea are slim. Jaw and airway shape, nasal obstruction, age and family history all contribute, and South Asian populations can develop it at lower body weights.
Could this be why antidepressants have not worked?
It is worth investigating. Untreated apnoea produces exactly the fatigue, low mood and poor concentration that depression does. If treatment for depression has repeatedly not helped and you snore heavily, ask your doctor about a sleep study.
My partner says I stop breathing but I feel fine.
Take the report seriously. You will not remember the arousals, so your own sense of your sleep is not the reliable witness here. Untreated apnoea carries real cardiovascular and accident risk.