Predicting the relationship between anxiety and health-related quality of life in post-stroke patients: The role of sleep duration.

Sleep and psychological disorders are common complaints in stroke survivors. The effectiveness of sleep duration in post-stroke on mental well-being and health outcomes has been reported recently. This study aimed to investigate the mediating effect of sleep duration on the relationship between anxiety and health-related quality of life in Chinese post-stroke; MATERIALS AND METHODS: We conducted a quantitative, cross-sectional study with participants recruited through a multistage, stratified, probability proportional to size sampling method. Anxiety, health-related quality of life, and sleep duration were measured by Zung Self-rating Anxiety Scale, World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire, and a self-administered, structured questionnaire. A multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to identify the association between anxiety, sleep duration, and quality of life. The direct and indirect effects of sleep duration on health-related quality of life was assessed using the bootstrap method via Model 4 (parallel mediation) of SPSS PROCESS macro; RESULTS: A total of 856 post-stroke patients participated in the study, and incidence of anxiety symptom amongst post-stroke was 33.53%. Sleep duration mainly plays partial mediating roles in the relationship between mild-to-moderate anxiety and quality of life in physical, psychological, and environment domains, with sleep duration of 7-8h playing a major role; CONCLUSIONS: A significant relationship among anxiety, sleep duration, and quality of life in post-stroke was found in this study. The sleep duration partially mediated the association between anxiety and quality of life. Suitable prevention methods and early interventions for sleep duration may improve the quality of life for post-stroke anxiety.