Sleep Disturbances and Their Relationship with Anxiety and Stress in Adolescents.

Abstract

Background: Sleep disorders are a growing issue of social health among adolescents, and they are also closely associated with high anxiety and stress. Academic requirements, the use of electronic devices, and lifestyle modifications are among the contributing factors that can result in sleep disruption, emotional regulation and cognitive dysfunction.

Objectives: To find out sleep disturbances of adolescents and assess the association between anxiety and stress using validated psychological measurement.

Methodology: This study was a cross-sectional conducted at Department of Medicine, LRH-MTI, Peshawar between jan 2019 to jan 2021.one that involved 150 adolescents between the age of 13 and 18 years. The quality of sleep was evaluated with the use of Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), anxiety and stress were evaluated with Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21). The SPSS version 19.0 was used to analyze data. The correlation and independent t-tests of Pearson were used, and p<0.05 was taken as statistically significant.

Results: The mean age was 15.8 years with a standard deviation of 1.7 year. 63 % of the adolescents reported poor sleep quality and had a mean PSQI score of 8.2 + 2.5. Adolescents who had poor sleep had a higher score in anxiety (mean = 13.5 ± 4.7, p=0.001) and stress (mean = 15.3 ± 5.4, p=0.002) than did adolescents with good sleep. There were positive significant relationships between PSQI and anxiety (r=0.63, p<0.001) and PSQI and stress (r=0.58, p<0.001).

Conclusion: The rates among the adolescents are high and are strongly linked to high levels of anxiety and stress. Interventions including the sleep hygiene education, stress, and psychological counseling should be offered early to enhance mental health and academic performance in this group.