Hi /r/mentalhealth, crossposting here because it might be more appropriate to discuss here than on /r/sleep. text: Hi /r/sleep, I've had a couple occurrences of unsettling, yet extremely brief, hallucinations during class, followed by a momentary loss of consciousness, then picking my head up as it is falling. I realize everyone sleeps in class, but... I just can't tell if this is just normal sleep deprivation.

For a long time I've had trouble falling asleep, trouble with feeling tired during the day, not feeling sleepy or tired, and not feeling well rested after sleep. Normally, I go to bed to have 7-9 hours of sleep, but it takes me a long time to go to sleep. At night, I take melatonin, and that has been helping.

But a couple times a week now, especially during class, I have been feeling spells of extreme exhaustion. I will feel normal as I'm sitting down in my chair. I try to fight this exhaustion, and zero in on every word the professor is saying. It's not like I'm slowly being lulled to sleep, like how I would imagine falling asleep during class. Here is the most extreme example:

The professor will be talking and taking notes. "Ok here's this equation, here's this fact, here's this..." and after a few seconds, this is what I perceive: "Here's llamas wearing beanies, there is a green field, all is peace and equality, so naturally the equation will be..." and this feels perfectly logical to me, and I take avid notes, but I soon realize my head is very rapidly falling, jerking my whole body in one direction. I snap up, and look at my notes, and my handwriting just trails off where I thought I was writing. This is the most extreme example.

For other reasons this has been a time of high stress and fairly extreme emotional pain, but I've dealt with this problem a few times now over a few months. Should I talk to a doctor? Am I just not getting enough rest? This whole thing has been very frustrating. My Dad thinks I may be depressed, but I have the sneaking suspicion that I'm on the autistic spectrum, or have a combination of that with mild depression/anxiety and insomnia.

Edit: in canada

TL;DR: Tired, stressed, not sure if I have a mental illness, hallucinating what the teacher is saying then waking up in class.