Mindfulness and self-compassion: associations with sleep heath and pre-sleep arousal

Abstract

More than half of college students are not getting adequate sleep. Burgeoning research suggests that mindfulness and self-compassion are both associated with better sleep health, potentially via a reduction in pre-sleep cognitive and somatic arousal. This study seeks to delineate: 1) how trait and pre-sleep mindfulness and self-compassion are associated with measures of sleep health (subjective sleep quality, daytime sleepiness, sleep duration, sleep onset latency, wake after sleep onset, sleep timing, and sleep regularity), 2) how mindfulness and self- compassion relate to measures of pre-sleep arousal, and 3) whether the effects of mindfulness and self-compassion on sleep health outcomes is mediated by cognitive and somatic pre-sleep arousal. Participants (n = 75) completed questionnaires and one week of daily diary reports and actigraphy. Results suggest that trait mindfulness and self-compassion were not significantly associated with pre-sleep arousal or sleep health. Pre-sleep mindfulness was not associated with cognitive pre-sleep arousal; however, pre-sleep self-compassion was negatively associated with cognitive pre-sleep arousal. Associations between mindfulness and sleep, and associations between self-compassion and sleep were not mediated by pre-sleep arousal. This study adds to a growing body of research to help illuminate possible protective factors such as mindfulness and self-compassion for increasing overall sleep health in college students.