Sleep and psychotic symptoms: An actigraphy and diary study with young adults with low and elevated psychosis proneness.

Shorter sleep time and negative dream valence predict paranoid symptoms, while feeling less rested and recalling dreams predict hallucinatory experiences. In people with elevated psychosis proneness, these sleep-related effects on hallucinations are stronger. The relationship between poor sleep and paranoia is bidirectional, but poor sleep only predicts hallucinations, not the reverse. The findings highlight sleep disturbance as a contributor to psychotic experiences and suggest that improving sleep could help prevent such symptoms.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Experimental research has shown that poor sleep triggers psychotic experiences, even in healthy participants. This warrants an in-depth investigation of this mechanism in a naturalistic environment, an exploration of which particular aspects of poor sleep trigger psychotic symptoms, and a test for reverse effects of symptoms on sleep. For this purpose, we conducted a 14-day ambulatory assessment study with 82 young adults (age: M = 21.24 years, SD = 1.54; 64.6% female), half of which were characterized by elevated psychosis proneness. Objective sleep parameters (actigraphically-measured sleep time, wake after sleep onset, sleep efficiency), self-reported sleep parameters (feeling rested, dream recall, dream valence), and psychotic symptoms (paranoid symptoms, hallucinatory experiences) were assessed once per day. Using multilevel regressions (928 data points), we found that shorter sleep time and negative dream valence predicted paranoid symptoms, whereas feeling less rested and dream recall predicted hallucinatory experiences. In participants with elevated psychosis proneness, associations with the aforementioned sleep parameters were increased for hallucinatory experiences but not for paranoid symptoms. Finally, we found bidirectional associations between poor sleep and paranoid symptoms but only unidirectional associations between poor sleep and hallucinatory experiences. The findings corroborate the relevance of sleep disturbance as a predictor of psychotic experiences. Future studies should further investigate the potential of sleep interventions to prevent psychotic symptoms and disorders.