Department of Psychology, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA.
Anxiety Stress Coping. 2023 Jan;36(1):83-96. doi: 10.1080/10615806.2022.2073441. Epub 2022 May 10.
Emotion regulation deficits are an outcome and risk factor for both insomnia and depression, suggesting that maladaptive emotion regulation might in part explain the bi-directional links between sleep and depression. The current study tests this hypothesis during the COVID-19 pandemic in emerging adult undergraduate students, a high-risk population for both depression and sleep disturbance. A sample of 154 undergraduate students completed a series of online questionnaires bi-weekly on sleep, depression, and emotion regulation strategies across eight weeks during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic (April 2nd to June 27th, 2020). Sleep disturbance and depression prospectively predicted one another across eight weeks, and both directions were mediated by maladaptive emotion regulation. However, sleep and depression failed to predict change in one another controlling for baseline measures, directly or via emotion regulation. The results suggest that maladaptive emotion regulation is a potential mechanism through which sleep disturbance and depression help maintain high levels of one another in college students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, emotion regulation deficits are potentially an important target for interventions to interrupt the sleep disturbance-depression cycle.
情绪调节缺陷是失眠和抑郁的结果和风险因素，这表明适应不良的情绪调节可能部分解释了睡眠和抑郁之间的双向联系。本研究在 COVID-19 大流行期间对刚成年的本科生进行了测试，这些本科生是抑郁和睡眠障碍的高风险人群。在 COVID-19 大流行早期（2020 年 4 月 2 日至 6 月 27 日）的八周内，154 名本科生完成了一系列在线问卷调查，内容涉及睡眠、抑郁和情绪调节策略。在八周内，睡眠障碍和抑郁呈前瞻性相互预测，并且两种方向都通过适应不良的情绪调节来调节。然而，在控制基线测量的情况下，睡眠和抑郁并没有直接或通过情绪调节来预测彼此的变化。研究结果表明，适应不良的情绪调节是 COVID-19 大流行期间大学生中睡眠障碍和抑郁相互维持高水平的潜在机制。因此，情绪调节缺陷可能是中断睡眠障碍-抑郁循环的干预措施的重要目标。
