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Sleep health improved after the pandemic, but unevenly

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Research area:psychology-neurosciencecognitive-psychology

What the study found

Sleep health in Catalonia, Spain, improved from mid-2021 after the COVID-19 pandemic and then stabilized. The improvement was not uniform across all sleep dimensions or across demographic and socioeconomic groups.

Why the authors say this matters

The authors conclude that sleep health should be included in pandemic preparedness. They also suggest that interventions should address both behavioral sleep factors and structural determinants of health, especially socioeconomic disadvantage.

What the researchers tested

The researchers conducted a repeated cross-sectional study using 11,794 responses from eight waves of the Catalan Health Survey. They measured sleep health with the SATED and Ru-SATED questionnaires, which cover Satisfaction, Alertness, Timing, Efficiency, Duration, and Regularity, and they examined differences by sex, age, body mass index, material deprivation, comorbidity burden, and living situation using weighted analyses.

What worked and what didn't

Sleep efficiency plateaued by late 2020, while sleep regularity dropped during the 2020 lockdowns and then improved soon afterward. Sleep satisfaction was the most unstable dimension, and it lagged behind the behavioral dimensions overall. Females consistently scored lower than males, although their improvement patterns were similar; older adults and people with excess weight showed different improvement trends; material deprivation was the strongest predictor of poorer sleep health and slower improvement; living alone had a temporary negative effect during lockdowns; and comorbidity burden affected baseline scores but not improvement trends.

What to keep in mind

This study was based on survey data from Catalonia and describes trends from 2020 to 2023, so the findings are specific to that setting and period. The abstract does not describe other limitations beyond the observational survey design and the subgroup comparisons reported.

Key points

  • Sleep health improved from mid-2021 and then stabilized.
  • Sleep regularity worsened during the 2020 lockdowns but improved afterward.
  • Sleep satisfaction was the most unstable sleep dimension.
  • Material deprivation was the strongest predictor of poor sleep health and delayed improvement.
  • Females scored lower than males, but their improvement trajectories were similar.
  • Living alone had a temporary negative impact during lockdowns and resolved by 2022.

Disclosure

Research title:
Sleep health improved after the pandemic, but unevenly
Authors:
Jordi de Batlle, Esther Gracia-Lavedan, Adriano D. S. Targa, Mario Henríquez-Beltrán, F. Barbé
Institutions:
Hospital Universitari Arnau de Vilanova, Hospital Universitari Arnau de Vilanova, Hospital Universitari Arnau de Vilanova, Hospital Universitari Arnau de Vilanova, Hospital Universitari Arnau de Vilanova, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Universidad Adventista de Chile
Publication date:
2026-01-28
DOI:
10.1093/sleep/zsag023
OpenAlex record:
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AI provenance: This post was generated by gpt-5.4-mini (OpenAI). The original authors did not write or review this post.

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