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. 2020 Dec:139:110282.
doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychores.2020.110282. Epub 2020 Oct 26.

Stay-at-home circumstances do not produce sleep disorders: An international survey during the COVID-19 pandemic

AMHSI Research Team  1 ; Milken Research Team  2 ; Yulia Roitblat  3 , Jacob Burger  4 , Aidan Leit  5 , Liliia Nehuliaieva  6 , Gulrukh Sh Umarova  7 , Vitalii Kaliberdenko  8 , Shanmugaraj Kulanthaivel  9 , Noa Buchris  10 , Michael Shterenshis  11
Affiliations

Stay-at-home circumstances do not produce sleep disorders: An international survey during the COVID-19 pandemic

AMHSI Research Team et al. J Psychosom Res. 2020 Dec.

Abstract

Objective: The anxiety-related insomnia and other sleep disorders were mentioned as possible side effects of quarantine and stay-at-home conditions. The questions to be explored were: Are there discernable differences in hours of sleep and sleep habits between the normal operational environment and the stay-at-home condition? and How seriously anxiety-induced insomnia or other sleep disorders may affect individuals during the stay-at-home?

Methods: This international prospective study analyzed results from the sleep-wake patterns questionnaire, daily logs, and interviews. During COVID-19 pandemic, surveys were administered to the healthy volunteers with stay-at-home for 14 days or more, without previous sleep disorders; volunteers were not involved in online education/work daily timetable-related activities.

Results: We analyzed 14,000 subjects from 11 countries with average stay-at-home of 62 days. The most significant changes in sleep occurred during the first 14 days of stay-at-home. The difference in the sleep duration between weekdays and weekends disappeared. Most of the participants discontinued using alarm clocks. The total sleep time increased in duration up to 9:10 ± 1:16 to the end of the quarantine/stay-at-home (+1:34, p = 0.02). The age-dependent changes in napping habits occurred. Only 1.8% of participants indicated insomnia during the first 14-day period with a decline to 0.5% after two months of stay-at-home.

Conclusion: During the stay-at-home situation, both duration and timing of sleep significantly differ from those of daily routine and most humans sleep longer than in a schedule-dependent operational environment. An appearance of anxiety-induced insomnia is extremely rare if a healthy individual is already in the stay-at-home situation.

Keywords: COVID-19; Coronavirus; International survey; Sleep habits; Stay-at-home.

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Conflict of interest statement

All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf and declare that they have no competing interests.

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