Psychosocial and health stressors during the COVID-19 pandemic and their association with sleep quality.

Abstract

Objective: We investigated how psychosocial and health stressors and related cognitive-affective factors were differentially associated with sleep quality during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods and measures: Adults living in Florida (n = 2,152) completed a Qualtrics survey in April-May 2020 (Wave 1). Participants (n = 831) were reassessed one month later (Wave 2; May-June 2020). At Wave 1, participants reported their level of physical contact with someone they care about, presence of a pre-existing chronic disease, employment status, loneliness, health worry, and financial distress. At Wave 2, participants rated their quality of sleep and insomnia symptoms.

Results: Loneliness, but not health worry or financial distress, directly predicted worse sleep quality. Lack of physical contact was indirectly associated with worse sleep quality via greater levels of loneliness. Further, results showed the presence of a pre-existing chronic disease was associated with both greater health worry and worse sleep quality.

Conclusion: Loneliness was the sole cognitive-affective predictor of worse sleep quality when controlling for other psychosocial factors. As expected, adults living with a chronic disease reported impaired sleep quality. Understanding the processes influencing sleep quality during a significant time of stress is important for identifying risk factors, informing treatment, and improving sleep health beyond the pandemic.