Poor sleep, suicide risk linked in college students

Suicidal behaviors are associated with poor sleep in college students, even after controlling for depression, a cross-sectional analysis shows. Specifically, students were 6.54 times as likely to be classified with suicide risk if they were depressed and 2.70 times as likely if they had poor quality of sleep.

“Our findings add to a growing body of literature pointing to sleep as an important component to include in screening and intervention efforts to prevent suicidal ideation and attempts on college campuses,” wrote Stephen P. Becker, PhD, a pediatric psychologist affiliated with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and his colleagues.

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Of the 1,700 college students included in this study (J Psychiatr Res. 2018 Jan 12:99:122-8), 82.7% of those classified with suicide risk had poor sleep quality, but only 31.3% of those with poor sleep quality were classified with suicide risk.

Most previous studies had looked only at insomnia or bad dreams rather than other aspects of poor sleep quality, and because this study used the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, it was able to evaluate additional well-validated components of sleep. The researchers suggested that future studies might try to identify which specific components of sleep quality might prove most predictive of suicide risk so that screening and intervention based on sleep quality can be more effective. This is important, because suicide is one of the leading causes of death among young adults.

The researchers declared no conflicts of interest.

Read more about this study in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.