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Are adversities and worries during the COVID-19 pandemic related to sleep quality? Longitudinal analyses of 46,000 UK adults

Wright, L; Steptoe, A; Fancourt, D; (2021) Are adversities and worries during the COVID-19 pandemic related to sleep quality? Longitudinal analyses of 46,000 UK adults. PLoS One , 16 (3) , Article e0248919. 10.1371/journal.pone.0248919. Green open access

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Abstract

BACKGROUND: There are concerns that both the experience of adversities during the COVID-19 pandemic and worries about experiencing adversities will have substantial and lasting effects on mental health. One pathway through which both experience of and worries about adversity may impact health is through effects on sleep. METHODS: We used data from 46,284 UK adults in the COVID-19 Social Study assessed weekly from 01/04/2020-12/05/2020 to study the association between adversities and sleep quality. We studied six categories of adversity including both worries and experiences of: illness with COVID-19, financial difficulty, loss of paid work, difficulties acquiring medication, difficulties accessing food, and threats to personal safety. We used random-effect within-between models to account for all time-invariant confounders. RESULTS: Both the total number of adversity experiences and total number of adversity worries were associated with lower quality sleep. Each additional experience was associated with a 1.16 (95% CI = 1.10, 1.22) times higher odds of poor quality sleep while each additional worry was associated with a 1.20 (95% CI = 1.17, 1.22) times higher odds of poor quality sleep. When considering specific experiences and worries, all worries and experiences were significantly related to poorer quality sleep except experiences relating to employment and finances. Having a larger social network offered some buffering effects on associations but there was limited further evidence of moderation by other social or psychiatric factors. CONCLUSION: Poor sleep may be a mechanism by which COVID-19 adversities are affecting mental health. This highlights the importance of interventions that support adaptive coping strategies during the pandemic.

Type: Article
Title: Are adversities and worries during the COVID-19 pandemic related to sleep quality? Longitudinal analyses of 46,000 UK adults
Location: United States
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0248919
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248919
Language: English
Additional information: © 2021 Wright et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health > Behavioural Science and Health
URI: https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10126166
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