Correlates of sleep difficulties in young adults: A gender comparison

Introduction Sleep disturbance is one of the most common health complaints among late adolescents and young adults. Women report more sleep-related complaints than men (Krishnan and Collop, 2006) and more anxiety or depressive symptoms (Voderholzer et al., 2003). Higher levels of repetitive negative thinking appear to be causally involved in the initiation/maintenance of emotional problems (Ehring and Watkins, 2008). Aims To analyze the sleep difficulties differences by gender and its associations with stress, cognitive emotion regulation, perseverative thinking and negative affect. Methods Five hundred and forty-nine students (80.1% females) from two Universities filled in the PSS-10 (Cohen et al., 1983; Amaral et al., 2014), CERQ (Garnefski et al., 2001; Castro et al., 2013), PTQ (Ehring et al., 2011; Chaves et al., 2013) and POMS-58 (McNair et al., 1971; Azevedo et al., 1991; Amaral et al., 2013). Three questions were used to access difficulties of initiating sleep (DIS), maintaining sleep (DMS) and early morning wakening (EMA). Results Females reported more sleep difficulties (excluding DIS), stress, perseverative thinking than males. Males reported higher levels in self-blame and blaming-others dimensions. In female sample we found significant correlations between all sleep difficulties and stress, perseverative thinking, emotional regulation (rumination, self-blame, catastrophizing) and negative affect. In male sample only the difficulties of initiating sleep are correlated with stress, perseverative thinking, self-blame and negative affect. Conclusions There are no gender differences in frequency and most of correlates of DIS. DMS and EMA were higher in females and were related to perseverative thinking and emotional regulation mechanisms in this sample.