Abstract

Mental health symptoms are of increasing concern among college students in the United States and are often associated with insufficient sleep. However, the predictive relations between sleep and mental health are not well understood. The present study examined the daily, bidirectional associations between multiple sleep variables (subjective rating of morning restedness, objective measurement of nighttime sleep minutes) and college students’ feelings of emotional distress. Self-reported loneliness was assessed as a moderator of these bidirectional relations. Participants were 101 undergraduate students (80% women) attending a liberal arts college in the northeastern United States. Students wore an actigraph to monitor nighttime sleep minutes across four weeknights (Monday–Thursday). They self-reported loneliness on the first day of the study and completed daily electronic assessments regarding restedness and emotional distress (worry, stress) each day for the remainder of the week. Multilevel modeling analyses demonstrated that greater restedness was predictive of less worry and stress that day. Further, the associations between better sleep (more rested, more nighttime sleep minutes) and less distress were stronger for less lonely students. In contrast, none of the distress indices were directly predictive of next-day restedness or nighttime sleep minutes, though one significant interaction demonstrated that the association between less worry and feeling more rested the next day was stronger for students who reported low compared to high loneliness. Together, the results point to sleep as a stronger influence on emotional distress than the reverse pathway and may suggest that social connection facilitates the positive influence of good sleep on student mental health.

摘要

心理健康症状越来越受到美国大学生的关注，并且通常与睡眠不足有关。然而，睡眠与心理健康之间的预测关系尚不清楚。本研究检查了多个睡眠变量（早晨休息的主观评价、夜间睡眠分钟数的客观测量）与大学生情绪困扰之间的日常双向关联。自我报告的孤独感被评估为这些双向关系的调节因素。参与者是在美国东北部一所文理学院就读的 101 名本科生（80% 为女性）。学生佩戴活动记录仪来监测四个工作日晚上（周一至周四）的夜间睡眠时间。他们在研究的第一天自我报告孤独感，并在一周的剩余时间里每天完成关于休息和情绪困扰（担心、压力）的每日电子评估。多层次建模分析表明，休息越多，当天的担忧和压力就越小。此外，对于不那么孤独的学生来说，更好的睡眠（更多的休息，更多的夜间睡眠时间）和更少的压力之间的关联更强。相比之下，没有一个痛苦指数可以直接预测第二天的休息时间或夜间睡眠时间，尽管一项重要的相互作用表明，与高度孤独相比，报告低孤独感的学生与第二天感觉更放松之间的关联更强。 . 一起，