The Effect Of Sleep Quality On Mood Of Medical Students

Objectives:Emotions are the most direct manifestation of mental health.Promoting emotional health of medical students is not only of great significance to their own study and life,but also beneficial to improve the quality of medical service in the future.The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of medical students’ night sleep quality on their next-day affect and to explore the mediating role of daily mindfulness on the relationship between sleep quality and affect,and the moderating role of neuroticism on the above relationship,which could provide evidence for taking measures to promote the daily emotional health of medical students.Methods:An intensive longitudinal diary study design was used.A total of 122 medical students recruited from a university in Jinan,Shandong Province were investigated by questionnaires for 14 consecutive days.Prior to formal follow-up,participants were required to complete the General Information Questionnaire and the Neuroticism Subscale of the Chinese Big Five Personality Inventory Brief Version.During the diary tracking survey,participants reported last night’s sleep quality upon waking up each morning and reported state mindfulness for the day and the positive activated affect,positive inactivated affect,negative activated affect,and negative inactivated affect on the day before going to bed every night.SPSS 26.0 software,Mplus 7.0 software,and the R 4.2.0 software were used to organize and analyze the data.The statistical methods used in this study include descriptive statistics,common method bias test,Pearson correlation analysis,multilevel linear regression,multilevel structural equation modeling,and cross-level moderating effect test.Results:(1)A total of 122 medical students were included in this study,and 1541 valid data points(the completion of the morning and evening questionnaires on the same day was counted as one valid data point)were obtained.The mean age of participants was 19.86±1.48 years.There were 94 girls(77.0%)and 28 boys(23.0%).51 participants(41.8%)majored in clinical medicine,25 participants(20.5%)majored in public health,22 participants(18.0%)majored in nursing,14 participants(11.5%)majored in pharmacy,and 10 participants(8.2%)majored in stomatology.(2)After controlling for positive and negative events experienced the next day,medical students’ night sleep quality positively predicted their next-day positive activated affect(β=0.103,P<0.001)and positive inactivated affect(β=0.123,P<0.001)and negatively predicted their next-day negative activated affect(β=-0.061,P=0.021)and negative inactivated affect(β=-0.098,P=0.002).(3)In four multilevel structural equation models with each type of affect as an outcome variable,the direct effects of night sleep quality on next-day positive activated affect(β=0.040,P=0.118),positive inactivated affect(β=0.047,P=0.073),negative activated affect(β=-0.013,P=0.518),and negative inactivated affect(β=-0.037,P=0.119)were not significant Daily mindfulness fully mediated the effect of night sleep quality on next-day positive activated affect(β=0.019,95%Cl[0.005,0.034]),positive inactivated affect(β=0.019,95%CI[0.004,0.034]),negative activated affect(β=-0.020,95%CI[-0.037,-0.005]),and negative inactivated affect(β=-0.027,95%CI[-0.048,-0.007]).(4)Neuroticism moderated the relationship between night sleep quality and next-day positive activated affect(γ11=0.024,P=0.035),with individuals having higher levels of neuroticism being more unstable in their daily positive activated affect and more susceptible to the previous night’s sleep quality.However,there was no moderating effect of neuroticism on the relationship between sleep quality and other affect.Conclusions:Good sleep quality is an important prerequisite for medical students to maintain optimal daily affect health and is particularly important for individuals with high neuroticism to enhance their daily positive activated affect.In addition,state mindfulness may be an important intervention target to improve the affect health of medical students with low sleep quality.