712 COVID-19 Risk Perception, Sleep Health and Peritraumatic Distress Among New Yorkers: The NYU COVID-19 Mental Health Study

The prevalence of insomnia in different COVID-19 policy phases: Longitudinal evidence from ITA.LI - Italian Lives

BACKGROUND

This study investigated changes in the prevalence of insomnia in Italy during COVID-19, starting from the first lockdown period (8 March 2020). We hypothesized that lockdown precipitated increased prevalence of insomnia symptoms relative to the pre-pandemic period; b) the gradual relaxation of containment measures - post-lockdown period (Phase 2 and Phase 3) - reduced insomnia severity, leading to a relative recovery of pre-pandemic levels; and c) we tested age-related heterogeneity in sleep responses, with an expected higher increase in insomnia in younger and middle-age groups.

METHODS

Analyses drew on a subsample (N = 883) of respondents to ITA.LI - Italian Lives, a recently established panel study on a probability sample of individuals aged 16 + living in Italy. To estimate patterns of change in insomnia, we first fitted a random-effects ordered logistic model on the whole sample. We then added an interaction term between policy phases and the respondent age to test whether the relationship between insomnia and policy phases differed across age groups. Analyses accounted for survey non-response weights.

RESULTS

The fraction of respondents reporting moderate ("somewhat" + 0.159, S.E. 0.017) or severe ("very much" + 0.142, S.E. 0.030) sleep disturbances significantly increased during Phase 1. The prevalence of insomnia followed an inverted U-shaped curve across policy phases, with further increases from baseline levels ("somewhat" + 0.168, S.E. 0.015; "very much" + 0.187, S.E. 0.030) during Phase 2, followed by a relative reduction in Phase 3, although it remained significantly higher than in the pre-pandemic period ("somewhat", + 0.084, S.E. 0.016; "very much", + 0.045, S.E. 0.010). There were significant age-related differences in insomnia patterns, as the discrete change from pre-pandemic levels in the probability of not suffering from insomnia was negative and significant for the younger age group (- 0.269, S.E. 0.060) and for respondents aged 35-54 (- 0.163, S.E. 0.039).

CONCLUSION

There is reason to believe that the emergency policy response to the COVID-19 crisis may have had unintended and possibly scarring effects in terms of increased prevalence of insomnia. The hardest hit were young adults and, to a lesser extent, the middle-aged; however, older respondents (55 +) remained resilient, and their insomnia trajectory bounced back to pre-pandemic levels.

Risk Perception, Perception of Collective Efficacy and Sleep Quality in Chinese Adults during COVID-19 Pandemic in Hong Kong: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: Only a few studies have studied the link between risk perception and sleep in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of our study is to propose and test a theoretical model to understand the relationships between COVID-19 risk appraisals—risk perception and perception of collective coordinated defense (PCCD) in particular—and subjective sleep quality in Chinese adults in Hong Kong during the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19-related fear and rumination were examined as potential mediators of the relationships. Methods: Data were collected using a self-report online questionnaire from a convenience sample of 224 Chinese adults during the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong. Results: Risk perception and PCCD were found to predict poor sleep quality. Mediation analysis showed that both fear and rumination mediated the relationship between risk perception and sleep quality, whereas only fear mediated the relationship between PCCD and sleep quality. The model was an excellent fit to the data and accounted for 44% of the variance in sleep quality in Chinese adults. This study indicated that both perception of high risks of contracting COVID-19 and anticipations of collective disease preventive efforts had adverse effects on subjective sleep quality via increasing COVID-19-related fear. Conclusions: These findings underscore the need for addressing sleep problems induced by psychological consequences of the pandemic. While policy makers often deliver public messaging campaigns that frame disease prevention as a collective goal, developing evidence-based coping strategies to combat COVID-19 adverse impacts on psychological health is equally important.