Sleep Disruption and its Correlation to Psychological Distress Among Medical Students

Background: Medical students are a population who are at great risk to develop sleep disrup-tion due to demanding clinical and academic duties. Knowing how much change in sleep –wake pattern is associated with subsequent psychological distress could be useful to establish a systematic mental health program in medical schools. Methods: We performed a cross-sectional study to identify the sleep quality and its correla-tion to psychological distress among 159 medical students. The instruments employed for data collection were a self report sleep- wake questionnaire, Pittsburg sleep quality index (PSQI), the general health questionnaire (GHQ) and a general questionnaire regarding demographic characteristics, use of drugs and history of psychopa-thology. Result: In descriptive analysis 57.2% of subjects were defined as poor sleeper. Moreover, there was a significant correlation between sleep quality and general health status of stu-dents (r=.6, p=. 000, n= 159). Further Regression analysis showed that number of sleep disruption was a predictor for both sleep quality and psychological distress. Conclusion: Sleep disruption due to shift work or other academic demanding could be a predictor for mental health morbidity in medical students which should be considered in education and mental health policy for this group of students.