Subjective sleep quality and sleep duration of patients in a psychiatric hospital

Abstract

Sleep complaints and sleep disturbances are highly prevalent in patients with psychiatric disorders. During hospitalization the patients’ condition may be even worse but little is known about the subjective sleep quality in psychiatric hospitals. Thus, we have investigated subjective sleep quality and mean sleep duration in patients with different psychiatric disorders at the end of hospitalization. For a period of one year, inpatients of a psychiatric hospital with diagnosis of substance use disorder (SUD), schizophrenia (SCZ), or anxiety/depressive disorders (AND) were routinely asked to fill in an easily comprehensible sleep quality questionnaire at the end of their hospitalization. Age, gender, subjective sleep quality, and sleep duration were analyzed; sleep duration was classified according to age-specific recommendations. Data of n=309 patients (age 52.1±17.9y, 56.1% women) were analyzed (n=63 SUD, n=50 SCZ, n=196 AND). Mean sleep duration was 7.0±2.0 h; 20.7% of patients had sleep durations below and 4.5% above age-specific recommendations. Non-restorative sleep during hospitalization was reported “almost always” in 38.2% (n=118), and “occasionally” in 30.1% (n=93). Subjective sleep quality was significantly associated with sleep duration (rs=−0.31, P<0.0005), but not with age, gender or diagnostic subgroup. The study showed that a great proportion of patients reported poor subjective sleep quality during hospitalization, regardless of age, gender and psychiatric diagnosis. As sleep quality was significantly associated with short sleep duration, a first step could be to take care to achieve recommended age-specific sleep durations in psychiatric hospitals.

Time of Day Matters: An Exploratory Assessment of Chronotype in a Forensic Psychiatric Hospital

“…Although we were unable to identify a significant relationship in our modest sample, self-reported aggression has been found to be associated with poor sleep quality, rather than simply being part of general psychopathology (46). In terms of poor sleep quality, our findings are consistent with the literature among inpatients (47), where psychiatric patients have been identified as being affected to a greater degree when compared with non-psychiatric hospitalizations (48).…”

Enhancement of zaleplon oral bioavailability using optimized self-nano emulsifying drug delivery systems and its effect on sleep quality among a sample of psychiatric patients

“…(2000) and Müller et al. (2016). Participant PSQI subscale scores were also similar to those from research using this instrument in a similar sample (Hedner et al., 2000; Müller et al., 2016), where sleep quality, sleep latency, and daytime dysfunction received higher scores on the PSQI.…”

“…(2016). Participant PSQI subscale scores were also similar to those from research using this instrument in a similar sample (Hedner et al., 2000; Müller et al., 2016), where sleep quality, sleep latency, and daytime dysfunction received higher scores on the PSQI. Patients administration of sleep medication scored very low, which should suggest minimal problems, and this is in agreement with Doi et al 2000 (Faulkner & Sidey-Gibbons, 2019).…”

Against the stream: intermittent nurse observations of in-patients at night serve no purpose and cause sleep deprivation

“…Surveys of psychiatric in-patients find that the large majority experience insomnia because of the noise and light on the ward and from nursing observations 4 , 5 . There is a bidirectional relationship so that insomnia is not just a symptom of psychiatric disorder – intermittent sleep deprivation makes most psychiatric disorders worse 6 .…”