(PS13-D89) Sleep Predicts Emotional Dysregulation in College Students

Cultivating joy and creating increased emotional wellbeing depends on a multitude of factors within the biopsychosocial framework, such as psychosocial wellbeing, belongingness, access to nutritive food, safe living and working environments, and optimal physical health. Emotion regulation and sleep have received increasing attention due to their bidirectional relationship. That is, ability to regulate emotion has been associated with quality sleep whereas sleep deprivation has been associated with increased negative affect. Much of the current research has focused on the impact of poor sleep on emotion regulation. However, given that sleep is important for other daily functions beyond emotion regulation, an examination of the factors that lead to decreased sleep quality is warranted.

College students (N=995; M=19.25 years old, SD=1.42, 76% female, 71% white) across seven US universities completed self-report questionnaires on SONA which included the Difficulties in Emotional Regulation Scale (DERS-18), the eight-item PROMIS Sleep Related Impairment Scale (SRI), the four-item Sleep Related Disturbance (SDI), and the four-item Sleep Condition Indicator (SCI) scale. Three items on the DERS-18, one item on the SRI, and two items on the SDI were reverse coded to indicate increased problem severity. Both the DERS-18 and the SRI were summed to create continuous variables whereby higher scores on the DERS-18 indicated higher emotional dysregulation.

Mean scores for the DERS-18 (M=22.54), SRI (44.08), SRI (M=11.65), and SCI (9.65) were calculated. Three separate linear regression examined whether emotion regulation problems predicted sleep impairment, disturbance, and insomnia. Results indicated that higher scores on the DERS-18 predicted higher scores on the SRI (β =.267; p< .001), the SDI (β =.122; p< .001), and the SCI (β =.103; p< .001) .

The current findings further bolster what is known about the relationship between emotion dysregulation and sleep, such that increased emotion dysregulation is predictive of poor sleep. College is often the first time where students are independently deciding their schedules and learning new skills that rely on both emotion regulation and adequate sleep. These skills, such as socializing, academic duties, and time-management, are in turn critical for cultivating joy throughout young adulthood. Further research is needed to better understand the specific impacts of emotion dysregulation on sleep to inform possible intervention strategies. Future studies should examine specific facets of sleep via objective measurement of sleep and/or review of specific items that assess specific aspects of sleep (e.g., difficultly falling asleep vs. difficulty staying asleep).