Impact of Sleep on Physical and Mental Health Following over 2 Years of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Dear Colleagues,

The world is slowly emerging from what has now been five waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, with countries varying greatly in their previous and ongoing responses to the virus. What have we learnt about sleep during the pandemic? A meta-analysis and meta-regression based on over half a million of participants from multiple populations and countries (Jahrami et al. 2022, Sleep Medicine Reviews) has revealed a pooled prevalence of sleep disturbances, mainly driven by low quality of sleep, at 40%. While it is unsurprising that 52% of those infected by COVID-19 have experienced disturbed sleep, caused largely but (not exclusively) by the physical symptoms of the virus, as many as 46% of children and adolescents were also affected by sleep disturbances during the COVID-19 pandemic (reported at 25% before the pandemic). Healthcare workers, university students and people with existing medical comorbidities also disproportionately suffered from poor sleep during the pandemic, with a prevalence of 41%. Importantly, sleep disturbances were higher during periods of lockdown; this was thought to be exacerbated by feelings of stress, lack of certainty and loneliness. As the pandemic continued, sleep disturbances increased in magnitude, suggesting people were not “getting used to” their new reality of life in the COVID-19 era. These prevalence rates are alarming as we now have evidence that disturbed sleep is causally related to mental health, and is a risk factor for a range of diseases including cardiovascular disease, type-2 diabetes, hypertension, obesity as well as cognitive decline. On the other hand, digital CBT for insomnia has been shown to have a long-lasting protective effects against sleep and depression symptoms, stress and worsening of general health during the COVID-19 pandemic (Cheng et al. 2021, Sleep). Therefore, numerous pressing research and public health questions have come to light: has there been a deterioration in mental and physical health that could be directly linked to disturbed sleep experience during the pandemic? How can we, first, help the general public and especially vulnerable populations such as children or teenagers recognise their sleep issues and, second, teach them to sleep better? Should good sleep hygiene be taught in schools or workplaces? Or is it not the time to finally implement the knowledge that school start time really matters for adolescent sleep? For this Special Issue, we are also inviting papers based on understudied populations, for example, homeless people or those living in a conflict or war-torn areas who might be particularly vulnerable to poor sleep and its deleterious impact on mental and physical health.

Dr. Marta Jackowska
Guest Editor

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• sleep screening
• poor sleep detection
• novel sleep measurement
• sleep education
• sleep training
• understudied populations
• burden of poor sleep on mental health during/after COVID-19
• burden of poor sleep on physical health during/after COVID-19