Story highlights 37% of study participants who said they had insomnia were actually "normal" sleepers

Researcher says these people are at greater risk of hypertension, depression and anxiety

Thinking you have a sleep problem -- even if you don't -- may be just as bad for your overall well-being as actually having a sleep disorder, a new review published in Behaviour Research and Therapy suggests.

Kenneth L. Lichstein, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Alabama, reviewed 20 existing studies that looked at both how people described their own sleep and how researchers measured the quantity and quality of their sleep.

In those studies, he found that 37 percent of participants who identified themselves as having insomnia were actually "normal" sleepers as defined by the respective study researchers.

That has consequences: he writes that "perceived sleep disturbance poses a health risk, even when accompanied by good sleep." And according to Lichstein, those people are at a greater risk of things like fatigue, hypertension, self-stigma, depression, suicidal ideation and anxiety -- all because they think they're bad sleepers.

Or as Alex Fradera writes in a piece about the findings in the British Psychological Society research digest, "these 'complaining good sleepers' can have as high impairment in terms of daily fatigue, anxiety and depression as those suffering under a clinical deficit of sleep."