Comparison of sleep/wake parameters for self-monitoring bipolar disorder

Background social interventions may teach patients with bipolar disorder to successfully detect warning signs of relapse. These interventions often include ongoing self-monitoring of sleep. We previously reported that a change in sleep duration (sleep plus bedrest) of > 3 h may indicate that a mood change is imminent. This analysis further investigated whether sleep duration, sleep onset or sleep offset was the most useful sleep/wake parameter to monitor for an oncoming mood change. s ult outpatients receiving treatment as usual recorded mood, sleep and medications every day on a home computer for a mean of 265 ± 103 days. A daily time series of mood, sleep duration (sleep plus bedrest), sleep onset and sleep offset was constructed for each patient. After applying an ARIMA (0,1,1) filter, a cross correlation function was used to analyze the temporal relationship between the residuals for lags of ± 7 days. s requent significant correlations were found between a change in either sleep onset or sleep offset and mood, than between sleep duration and mood. Patients with a significant correlation between sleep duration and mood included 86% of those with a significant correlation between sleep onset or sleep offset and mood. Mean sleep duration when euthymic was long (≥ 8 h in 89% of patients, ≥ 9 h in 51% of patients). tions eported data, naturalistic study, and computer access required. sions onitoring of sleep duration is recommended for patients with bipolar disorder. Better understanding of the long sleep duration of euthymic patients is required.