Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Abstract Introduction Stress in interpersonal relationships has been related to adverse mental health outcomes, however, fewer studies have examined associations with physical health, particularly sleep. To date, most studies rely on retrospective reports of stress and sleep measured at a single timepoint, and do not examine multiple types of relationship stress. We tested whether daily stress with family, partner/spouse, and/or friends predicted shorter total sleep time (TST), lower sleep efficiency (SE), and/or later sleep midpoint via ecological momentary assessment (EMA) among young adults. Methods Participants were 293 young adults (21-30 y/o; 64% female; 5% Asian, 25% Black, 5% Biracial or Multiracial, 1% Other race, 64% White) reporting regular alcohol use from two studies with a shared assessment battery and up to 18-day EMA protocol. Participants reported daily sleep (TST hours, SE, and midpoint, calculated from sleep diary reports), cannabis use (yes/no), alcohol use (total number of drinks), and stress with family, spouse/partner, and friends (coded as: 0=not at all, 1=somewhat, 2=moderately/very much). We fit generalized linear mixed effects models and estimated within-subject and between-subject associations between each stress variable and sleep outcome, respectively, adjusting for time-invariant (age, past-year household income, assigned sex) and time-variant covariates (weekend, cannabis use, alcohol use, pre- vs. post-COVID-19 pandemic). Results Participants completed a median of 17 EMA daily records (range: 1-18). Considering between-person effects, participants who reported feeling somewhat stressed with family B(SE)=-.66(.32), p=0.04 or partner/spouse B(SE)=-.63(.35), p=0.07 reported lower average TST over the EMA protocol. No associations emerged with experiencing moderately/very much stress in any relationship, nor for SE or midpoint outcomes. Results did not suggest a within-person effect of any type of daily relationship stress on sleep that night. Conclusion Among a well-characterized sample with up to 18 days of EMA data, reporting some stress in family and partner/spouse relationships predicted lower TST, relative to peers without stress in these relationships. Results may suggest that cumulative stress over time may be more detrimental for sleep than acute day-to-day stressors. When intervening on sleep, clinicians should also consider relationship stress, which is amenable to evidence-based interventions such as cognitive behavioral therapy. Support (if any) R01AA025617 (SLP), R01AA026249 (BPH/SLP), K23HL159293 (KJ)
Jakubowski et al. (Sat,) studied this question.