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Don't worry, sleep well: predictors of sleep loss over worry

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Abstract

In this study, our aim was to explore the relationship between sleep quality/quantity, chronotype, pre-sleep arousal, arousability, stress, coping, neuroticism, extraversion, mood/affect, perceived health and sleep loss due to worry in college students. A total of 713 students (mean age 19.29 ± 1.256 years) completed a set of questionnaires that assessed sleep loss over worry (item from the General Health Questionnaire), other sleep–wake aspects (e.g., habitual sleep duration, sleep needs, sleep depth, subjective sleep quality, sleep latency, night awakenings, daytime sleepiness, sleep flexibility, sleep reactivity to stress), pre-sleep arousal (cognitive/somatic arousal), arousability, coping, neuroticism, extraversion, perceived physical/mental health, academic stress and positive/negative affect. Sleep disturbance due to worry was reported by 40.6 % of female and 19.2 % of male students. It was significantly correlated with perceived health and the majority of sleep–wake variables. Almost all correlations between the psychological traits under study and sleep loss over worry were significant. Results from the stepwise regression analyses, however, showed that only cognitive arousal (β = .353; p < .001), perceived academic stress (β = .129; p < .01), arousability (β = .127; p < .01), worry tendency (β = .153; p < .001), gender (β = .118; p < .01) and perceived physical health (β = −.093; p < .01) were significant predictors of sleep loss over worry. Together, these variables accounted for 40.3 % of the total variance in sleep disturbance due to worry. Our findings suggest that cognitive arousal, academic stress, arousability, tendency to worry, gender and perceived physical health may be important determinants of sleep loss over worry. These results may have important implications for prevention and intervention to improve sleep quality in young adults.

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Acknowledgments

The co-operation of the professors and students is gratefully acknowledged. Thanks are also due to Catarina Soares for her help in data collection. We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and commentaries.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Education and Psychology, University of Aveiro, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193, Aveiro, Portugal

    Daniel Ruivo Marques & Ana Allen Gomes

  2. Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Life Sciences, IBILI, Azinhaga de Santa Comba, 3000-548, Coimbra, Portugal

    Daniel Ruivo Marques

  3. CINTESIS, Center for Health Technology and Services Research, R. Dr. Plácido Costa, 4200-450, Porto, Portugal

    Ana Allen Gomes

  4. Nursing School of Coimbra, Rua 5 Outubro, 3046-851, Coimbra, Portugal

    Manuela Frederico Ferreira

  5. Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, Rua Larga, 3004-504, Coimbra, Portugal

    Maria Helena Pinto de Azevedo

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  1. Daniel Ruivo Marques
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  2. Ana Allen Gomes
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  3. Manuela Frederico Ferreira
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  4. Maria Helena Pinto de Azevedo
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Correspondence to Daniel Ruivo Marques.

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Conflict of interest

Daniel Ruivo Marques, Ana Allen Gomes, Manuela Frederico Ferreira and Maria Helena Pinto de Azevedo declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Marques, D.R., Gomes, A.A., Ferreira, M.F. et al. Don't worry, sleep well: predictors of sleep loss over worry. Sleep Biol. Rhythms 14, 309–318 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41105-016-0060-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41105-016-0060-z

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