Sleep Quality, Daytime Napping, and Dream Recall in Older Adults: A Biopsychosocial Study of Health, Loneliness, and Humor Styles.

In a cross-sectional survey of 609 community-dwelling older adults in Greece, sleep quality was modestly associated with better mental and physical health, more affiliative humor, and less emotional loneliness. Daytime napping increased with age and was more common in men. Dream recall was linked to better physical health, more self-enhancing humor, and less social loneliness. The authors caution that single-item, non-validated measures and multiple uncorrected statistical tests make these preliminary, hypothesis-generating findings, not confirmatory or causal evidence.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Sleep experiences in later life are shaped by multiple biological, psychological, and social factors. This exploratory cross-sectional study examined associations between subjective sleep quality, daytime napping, dream recall, and selected health and psychosocial variables in community-dwelling older adults, within a biopsychosocial framework. A cross-sectional questionnaire-based survey was conducted in Greece among 609 community-dwelling adults aged 60 years and older. Participants completed self-report measures of health-related quality of life (SF-36), loneliness, humor styles, and brief single-item measures of subjective sleep quality, sleep sufficiency, daytime napping, and dream recall. Descriptive statistics, Spearman correlations, Mann-Whitney U tests, and multiple regression analyses were performed. Given the exploratory design and the use of multiple statistical tests without correction for multiple comparisons, the findings were interpreted cautiously. Sleep quality was positively associated with mental health (ρ=0.247), physical health (ρ=0.211), and affiliative humor (ρ=0.148) and negatively associated with emotional loneliness (ρ=-0.215). Sleep sufficiency and sleep quality were almost perfectly correlated (ρ=0.989), suggesting substantial conceptual overlap. Daytime napping was positively associated with age (ρ=0.184) and was more frequent in men than women. Dream recall was positively associated with physical health (ρ=0.141) and self-enhancing humor (ρ=0.202) and negatively associated with social loneliness (ρ=-0.136). In multivariable analyses, mental health (β=0.145; p=0.049) and affiliative humor (β=0.159; p=0.001) were independently associated with sleep quality. Subjective sleep experiences in older adults showed modest associations with health status, loneliness, and humor styles. These findings should be considered preliminary and exploratory, particularly because key sleep and dream variables were assessed using non-validated single-item measures, several associations were modest in magnitude, and multiple statistical tests were conducted without correction for multiple comparisons. The results may help generate hypotheses for future studies using validated multidimensional sleep and dream measures, but they should not be interpreted as confirmatory or causal evidence.