Sleep Med Psychophysiol.  2002 Jun;9(1):48-55.

Effects of Minor Stressful Events on Sleep in College Students.

Affiliations
  • 1Department of Psychiatry, Korea University, College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.

Abstract


OBJECTIVES
Stress is known to be a common cause of short-term insomnia and insomniacs often complain that stress induces sleep problems. However, previous studies on the correlation between stress and sleep do not show consistent results. We aimed to investigate the effects of minor stressful events on sleep among college students. METHOD: Physically and mentally healthy college student volunteers filled out a self-assessment questionnaire to evaluate their stress and sleep. To find out the status of average stress and sleep, the volunteers filled out K-DSI and daily sleep assessments on three consecutive days. In addition, we surveyed the amount of caffeine beverage intake and assessed the degree of depression and anxiety.
RESULTS
The total number of students participating in this study was 202, 101 men and 101 women. Minor stress turned out to significantly affect non-restorative sleep and secondary symptoms of insomnia (awakening difficulty, displeasure, feeling of dissatisfaction with sleep, physical uneasiness or pain at awakening, daytime sleepiness, depressive moods, tiredness and concentration difficulty). However, global PSQI score, self-reported sleeping hours, sleep latency, awakening frequency, frequency and duration of napping, were not explained by stress scores.
CONCLUSION
In this study, minor stresses seemed to affect sleep, especially secondary symptoms caused by non-restorative sleep. We can thus infer that minor stresses impair the restorative effects of sleep by inducing arousal, and the direct relationship the two can be confirmed by polysomnogram.

Keyword

Minor stress; Sleep

MeSH Terms

Anxiety
Arousal
Beverages
Caffeine
Depression
Female
Humans
Life Change Events*
Male
Polysomnography
Surveys and Questionnaires
Self-Assessment
Sleep Initiation and Maintenance Disorders
Volunteers
Caffeine
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