examine whether an abbreviated mindful breathing intervention, versus abbreviated progressive muscle relaxation or self-monitoring, would result in greater reductions in stress and improvements in sleep health. Methods: Data were collected from a sample of 120 students from a large Midwestern university. Participants who completed the pre-and post-intervention questionnaires were included in the analyses (n=111; 92.5%). Participants were randomized into a mindful breathing (MB), an abbreviated progressive muscle relaxation (APMR), or a self-monitoring (SM) group. Participants were asked to complete the interventions daily for 4-weeks using an online delivery system. In person assessments of sleep quality, insomnia symptoms, stress, and pre-sleep arousal were assessed using validated self-report questionnaires preand post-intervention. Results: Repeated-measures ANOVAs were conducted to examine the effectiveness of the interventions. Results revealed a marginal group X time interaction effect for stress (F = 2.897, p = .059). There was a main effect of time for pre-sleep somatic arousal (F = 7.498, p = .007), while there was a group X time interaction for pre-sleep cognitive arousal (F = 4.518, p = .013). There was a marginal group X time interaction for insomnia symptoms (F = 2.969, p = .055) and a main effect of time for sleep quality (F = 13.772, p < .001). Lastly, changes in stress and pre-sleep cognitive arousal were related to changes in insomnia symptoms (r = -.225, p = .054; -.244, p = .009, respectively).
Conclusion:The findings suggest pre-sleep somatic arousal and sleep quality improved regardless of group membership. Further, mindful breathing and abbreviated progressive muscle relaxation resulted in (marginal) reductions in stress and cognitive pre-sleep arousal, which were related to improvements in insomnia symptoms. Overall, abbreviated strategies targeting stress and arousal, such as mindful breathing and progressive muscle relaxation, delivered online may be beneficial for college students' reduced stress and subsequent sleep health.
Support (If Any)
Introduction:Research has demonstrated an association between insomnia symptoms, nightmares, and suicidal ideation even above and beyond symptoms of depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Further, the longer an individual has insomnia or nightmares, the more strongly they are associated with suicide risk. However, there has been little prospective work examining whether sleep disorders prospectively predict the development of suicidal ideation. The present study aimed to examine whether insomnia symptoms and nightmares predict the development of suicidal ideation. We hypothesized that both insomnia symptoms and nightmares would prospectively predict suicidal ideation at one, three, and eleven month post-assessments after controlling for baseline suicidal ideation. Methods: Amazon's Mechanical Turk was utilized to recruit 706 participants, who then received follow-up requests for participation after one month (N = 375), three months (N = 292), and eleven mo...
