GETTING a good night’s sleep can prove so transformative to patients at Great Western Hospital, nurses are regularly told they have changed their lives and saved their marriages.

Specialist nurse Samantha Backway, who has run the sleep apnoea clinic at Swindon’s hospital for the past decade, said poor sleep can hit people’s mental health - resulting in low self-esteem and mood

“If you can break that cycle, giving them a run of good nights’ sleep, they will cope better in the day,” said Ms Backway.

Sleep Well features as today’s tip on BBC Wiltshire’s Mental Wealth calendar, a month-long campaign backed by the Swindon Advertiser that offers up a different daily activity aimed at boosting people’s mental health.

Ms Backway, who in 2017 was voted GWH patients’ favourite staff member, spends her time helping patients with conditions like sleep apnoea – a debilitating issue that means they struggle to nod off at night.

If someone can’t sleep, they won’t cope as well during the day, said Ms Backway. “Patients use words and phrases like ‘amazing’, ‘life-changing’ and ‘you saved my marriage’. Lack of sleep is not just affecting their mental health, but their families’, because of the stress and depression that lack of sleep can cause.”

She recommended people try and establish a regular sleep pattern, going to bed and waking up at similar times each day.

Doing things like drinking coffee in the evening, exercising before bed or using their mobile phone late into the night can overstimulate the brain. And exposure to too much light is one of the things that prevents the body from producing melatonin, commonly called the sleep hormone.

Ms Backway said: “It’s about establishing a regular sleeping pattern, going to bed at the same time and waking up and a similar time, making sure where you sleep is comfortable, cool, with the right light and noise levels.”

To find out more about sleep apnoea, the hospital’s sleep service is holding an information day at The Academy, GWH, on Saturday, May 11, 10am-3pm.