Elsevier

Sleep Medicine Reviews

Volume 42, December 2018, Pages 47-58
Sleep Medicine Reviews

Clinical Review
Reciprocal relationships between daily sleep and mood: A systematic review of naturalistic prospective studies

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2018.05.005Get rights and content

Summary

An intimate relationship exists between sleep and affective states. Disturbances in sleep are common across a spectrum of psychopathologies, and are recognised as precipitating or prodromal factors for mood disorders. Conversely, affective states can impact sleep quality and ability to fall asleep. However, one of the main limitations of this literature is that studies have typically assessed sleep and mood at one time point and studies are often laboratory-based, where measurement of both sleep and mood has dubious ecological validity. The aim of the current review was to systematically examine the evidence for associations between day-to-day fluctuations in sleep and mood in naturalistic studies using ambulatory diary techniques. Electronic databases (EMBASE, PsycINFO, PubMed, and SCOPUS) were searched for studies using experience sampling methodology to investigate daily associations between sleep and mood in naturalistic environments in healthy and clinical samples. Findings of the included studies supported the notion of a reciprocal relationship between subjective sleep variables (sleep quality, sleep duration and sleep latency) and daytime affective states over the short term, and highlight the potential clinical importance of daily sleep disturbance in the prediction and prevention of the development of psychopathology in the future.

Section snippets

Method

The PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines were used to identify studies to include in the review.

Summary of included studies

Twenty-nine studies published between 1994 and 2017 were included in the systematic review. Sample sizes ranged between 19 and 761, with a total of 5422 participants and a mean of 187. Eight studies investigated samples of children and adolescents ∗[20], [21], [22], ∗[23], ∗[24], [25], [26], [27], one study examined older adult samples [28], and the remaining studied adult samples. The majority of included studies investigated healthy populations, with the exception of three studies ∗[20], [29]

Discussion

A growing body of literature suggests a link between sleep and affective states. The current review expands on previous findings by attending to data from multi-day naturalistic studies, and lends support to the generally accepted notion that disturbed sleep leads to mood disturbance, and vice versa. As represented in Fig. 2, neither ‘sleep’ nor ‘affect’ can be conceptualised as unitary phenomena, and multiple relationships between the two have been observed.

Conflicts of interest

The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.

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