Improving sleep quality for better mental health: evidence from a comprehensive meta-analysis

This meta-analysis investigates the causal relationship between sleep quality and mental health, analyzing 65 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with over 8,600 participants. Results show that improving sleep significantly benefits various mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, and stress. The findings reveal medium-sized effects on depression (g = -0.63) and anxiety (g = -0.51), indicating that sleep interventions like cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBTi) effectively reduce these symptoms. Additionally, improved sleep also has a moderate effect on reducing stress and a small yet significant effect on reducing positive psychosis symptoms (g = -0.26).

The analysis demonstrates a dose-response relationship: greater sleep improvements lead to better mental health outcomes. Importantly, these benefits occur regardless of participants' baseline mental health status or the presence of physical comorbidities, suggesting broad applicability. Face-to-face interventions by clinicians show the most significant impact, while self-administered programs yield smaller effects. However, despite these promising results, the effects of sleep improvements tend to diminish over time, underlining the need for sustained intervention strategies.

Overall, this study emphasizes the critical role of sleep in mental health and advocates for integrating sleep improvement strategies into clinical practice to enhance mental well-being. It also highlights gaps in research, particularly the need for studies on long-term impacts and a wider range of mental health conditions.