Title
Sleep Quality Mediates the Relationship Between Traumatic Events, Psychological Distress, and Suicidality in College Undergraduates.
Department/School
Computer and Information Sciences
Date
2020
Document Type
Article
Keywords
mental health, sleep, suicide, undergraduate, well-being
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/07448481.2020.1826493
Abstract
Objectives: To determine whether sleep quality mediates the relationship between traumatic life events and psychological wellbeing in college students. Methods: 40,646 undergraduate responses from the Spring 2017 National College Health Assessment II were evaluated for relationships between two predictor variables: satisfactory sleep and traumatic life events, and two outcome variables: psychological distress (a composite of anxiety, exhaustion, feeling overwhelmed, depression, sadness, loneliness, hopelessness, and anger) and suicidality (composite of self-harm behaviors, suicidal ideation, suicide attempts). Linear mediation regression analysis via structural equation modeling was used to test these relationships. Results: Each additional traumatic life event students reported experiencing was associated with a 27.6% − 58.9% increase in the odds of reporting indicators of psychological distress or suicidality. Satisfactory sleep significantly mediated this negative relationship (proportional effects between 10.6 and 12.5%). Conclusions: Healthy sleep mediates the impact of traumatic life events on psychological distress and suicidality.
Published in
Journal of American College Health
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Citation/Other Information
Berg, S.S., Rosenau, P.S., and Prichard, J.R. (2020). Sleep Quality Mediates the Relationship Between Traumatic Events, Psychological Distress, and Suicidality in College Undergraduates. Journal of American College Health, 70 (6), 1611-1614. https://doi.org/10.1080/07448481.2020.1826493