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

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.