(PS9-C55) Links Between Sleep, Social Connection, and Stressful Experiences Among Adolescent Psychiatric Inpatients

Prior research has articulated risks associated with psychiatric inpatient hospitalization among adolescents. Risks include disruption of sleep schedule, reduced contact with positive social supports, and experiences of stressful or traumatic events during hospitalization. This prior work has generally examined these factors in isolation. However, research in contexts outside of inpatient psychiatric care have suggested that poor sleep, reduced social support, and stressful experiences may reciprocally affect each other. This suggests a need to simultaneously investigate the relationship between these variables within an inpatient psychiatric sample, where these occurrences are common. Understanding of these relationships, including directionality, will enhance the ability to intervene and incorporate therapeutic measures in inpatient units. This study aims to describe associations between sleep, social support, and experiencing stressful events using daily assessment among a sample of adolescent psychiatric inpatients.    

Data were derived from a larger study of risk factors among a sample of 119 suicidal adolescent inpatients ages 12-19, recruited from a large, urban adolescent inpatient psychiatric unit. Patients who were admitted for serious risk of suicide were eligible to participate. After completing a baseline assessment, participants met each weekday with a study staff member for the duration of their stay on the inpatient unit to answer a series of self-report daily diary questions, including how well they slept the night prior, level of support felt by unit staff, other patients on the unit, family members, and friends outside of the unit since the last check-in, and experience of stressors since the last survey.

Analyses will seek to investigate the associates between sleep, social support, and experiences of stressful events, both cross-sectionally and temporally. This information will reveal the extent to which these areas of patients’ lives are related and concurrently impact, or even, exacerbate one another. Given that sleep, social support, and stressful events are commonly impacted on inpatient units, the results of the planned analyses will provide impactful findings that have implications for clinical practice in terms of how psychiatric inpatient units can provide effective and science-informed care to adolescents presenting with serious risk of suicide.