Sleep disturbances and its associated factors among the college students in Tamil Nadu- a cross sectional study

Abstract

Background: The key building block of good health is sleep. According to sleep foundation the term sleep disturbance is defined as a disruption in sleep that causes arousal or awakening. Sleep disturbances is a widespread common health problem among university students who are entering into adulthood. The present study was done with the objective of finding the prevalence of sleep disturbances among the college students studying in university of Tamil Nadu.Methods: This was a cross sectional study done among 536 participants, whose sleep disturbances were assessed using pre-tested, pre-designed questionnaire. Descriptive and Analytical statistics were used. Analytical statistics was done using Chi-square test and binominal logistic regression.Results: Out of 536 students, 299 (55.78%) were suffering from sleep disturbances among which 70.9% were females and 83% of them had less than 1 hour time gap between screen time and their regular sleep. There was a significant association between sleep disturbances and repeated worrying about lots of tests, feeling lost something in life, felt badly about pandemic/online teaching, felt isolated and often taking food out of hostel/home.Conclusions: This study showed that majority of college students suffer from sleep disturbances, as their stress levels goes up and their physical activity goes down.