Knowland Victoria C P, van Rijn Elaine, Gaskell M Gareth, Henderson Lisa
Department of Psychology, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, UK.
Speech and Language Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK.
BMC Psychol. 2022 Mar 21;10(1):76. doi: 10.1186/s40359-022-00729-4.
Sleep and mental wellbeing are intimately linked. This relationship is particularly important to understand as it emerges over childhood. Here we take the opportunity that the COVID-19 pandemic, and resulting lockdown in the UK, presented to study sleep-related behaviour and anxiety in school-aged children.
Parents and children were asked to complete questionnaires towards the start of the UK lockdown in April-to-May of 2020, then again in August of that year (when many restrictions had been lifted). We explored children's emotional responses to the pandemic and sleep patterns at both time points, from the perspectives of parents and children themselves.
Children's bedtime anxiety increased at the start of the lockdown as compared to a typical week; however, by August, bedtime anxiety had ameliorated along with children's COVID-19 related anxiety. Bedtime anxiety predicted how long it took children to fall asleep at night at both the start and the end of the lockdown. Bedtime and wake-up time shifted at the start of lockdown, but interestingly total sleep time was resilient (likely owing to an absence of early school start times) and was not predicted by child anxiety.
These findings further support calls for sleep quality (in particular, time taken to fall asleep) to be taken as a key indicator of mental health in children, particularly under usual circumstances when schools are open and sleep duration may be less resilient.
睡眠与心理健康密切相关。了解这种关系在儿童时期的发展尤为重要。在此，我们利用新冠疫情及英国随之而来的封锁这一契机，研究学龄儿童与睡眠相关的行为及焦虑情况。
在2020年4月至5月英国封锁开始时，要求家长和孩子填写问卷，同年8月（许多限制措施已解除）再次填写。我们从家长和孩子自身的角度，探讨了两个时间点儿童对疫情的情绪反应和睡眠模式。
与正常周相比，封锁开始时儿童的就寝焦虑增加；然而，到8月时，就寝焦虑以及儿童与新冠疫情相关的焦虑都有所缓解。就寝焦虑在封锁开始和结束时都能预测儿童夜间入睡所需的时间。封锁开始时就寝时间和起床时间发生了变化，但有趣的是总睡眠时间保持稳定（可能是由于没有早到校时间），且不受儿童焦虑的影响。
这些发现进一步支持了将睡眠质量（尤其是入睡所需时间）作为儿童心理健康关键指标的呼吁，特别是在学校开放且睡眠时间可能较不稳定的正常情况下。
