Sleep Quality and Mental Health in “Healthy” College Sleepers

Starting college often means a lot of change at once. For many undergraduate students, it is my first time sharing a small space with a roommate. With new academic demands and social pressures, it is common for students to struggle with their mental health, which can affect not only their grades, but also their relationships and overall well-being. In this article, Benjamin R. Meagher and Brynn Anderson from the Department of Psychology at Hope College in Holland, MI, explore how the physical college environment relates to undergraduate students’ mental health. A student’s room on campus has many roles. It is a place to sleep, study, socialize, relax, and simply be alone. Even though dorm rooms come with standard furniture, they still offer a chance for students to personalize the space and express themselves, which can support autonomy and a sense of flourishing. However, imagining a certain ambience for a room does not always mean it becomes reality. Structural limitations, social conflicts, or one’s own ability to decorate and organize space can all interfere. This article focuses on the idea that a room that does not support self-regulation and coping may negatively affect students’ psychological needs. The study examined how students perceive their room’s ambiance and how that perception relates to their well-being. It also looked at how differences between an ideal room and the actual room of ambience may be linked to mental health outcomes such as symptoms of depression and anxiety.  In Study 1, 163 undergraduate students completed a questionnaire about their ideal version of on-campus housing. The ideal space was described as “the space you would want to live in on campus if there was an unlimited amount of time and money to build and personalize it. It is the type of place you would design if you could have anything you want in a room. It fits you like a glove and fulfills your every need.” After this description, participants rated how important certain aspects of the space were, such as relaxation, community, and how inviting it felt, and then were asked whether those same qualities described the feelings their actual rooms created in themselves and in others. The researchers also used established measures to assess depressive and anxiety symptoms, as well as negative and positive effects. Overall, this part of the article focused on whether the idealized version of students’ rooms matched their actual living space, and how that match, or mismatch, influenced their mental health. The results showed that when students’ ideal versions of their dorms were very different from their actual living spaces, they reported more depressive symptoms and higher negative effects. There was no strong relationship between room ambiance and positive affect. This suggests that dorm rooms may function more as spaces that protect students from negative emotions than as spaces that increase positive experiences. Study 2 addressed one of the limits of Study 1 by including roommates. In this second study, 75 roommate pairs, or 150 participants in total, completed the same measures used in Study 1. In addition, participants answered questions about their relationship with their roommate and completed the 44-item Big Five Inventory, which assesses extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness. The results of Study 2 were similar to those of Study 1 in terms of the relationship between mental health and the difference between perceived and ideal room ambience. Again, larger gaps between the real room and the ideal one were linked to more negative mental health symptoms. However, there were no significant findings connecting roommate relationship quality to residents’ mental health. This suggests that, in this study, mental health symptoms were more closely related to students’ own perceptions of their environment than to their relationship with their roommate. The study also found that individuals who described their rooms as high in self-expression, uniqueness, creativity, and pride, but low in spirituality, quiet, organization, productivity, and cleanliness, were more likely to report higher rates of negative mental health symptoms.

After a child is born, one of the things they do most is sleep, which plays a major role in neurodevelopment and synaptic plasticity during this critical period of growth (Cheung et al., 2017). Because so many important developmental processes occur during sleep, it can be considered crucial to a child's development later in life. Despite its importance, however, research has shown that a high number of young children experience sleep problems (Davis et al., 2004). One widely recognized contributor to poor sleep among children is excessive screen media use in the home, whether through television viewing or touchscreen devices, which children often find highly stimulating (Cheung et al., 2017).

Stress is defined as an individual’s reaction, whether psychological or physiological, to external or internal challenges or triggers (American Psychological Association, 2018). There are many sources of stress that can change and fluctuate throughout someone’s lifetime. For instance, college students may cite their studies or future as being stressful, while adults may experience stress related to finances, jobs, or personal lives. One group of individuals that experiences particularly heightened levels of stress are healthcare professionals (Pulido-Martos, 2011). As a result, I sought to find a possible stress management strategy for individuals working in the healthcare field.

Feelings of belonging and connection within a community—most often fostered through social interaction—are crucial to well-being. However, people’s perceptions of social interaction are often clouded by pessimistic assumptions, such as believing others do not want to talk to them, underestimating their own conversational abilities, or holding negative beliefs about how others perceive them (Sandstrom et al., 2022). These fears can manifest through “civil inattention,” a term characterized by avoidance behaviors such as plugging in headphones or remaining glued to one’s phone (Sandstrom et al., 2022). Overreliance on these behaviors can cultivate what Ozawa de-Silva (2021) describes as a “lonely society,” emphasizing the need to encourage stronger social bonds within communities. The following review summarizes a week-long scavenger hunt conducted among university students by Sandstrom et al. (2022), in which participants completed challenges that involved either observing or talking with strangers. The researchers aimed, first, to support existing findings that people underestimate their ability to converse with others and, second, to demonstrate that talking to strangers can lead to positive experiences, revealing that many social fears are exaggerated. More broadly, the study sought to act as an intervention by showing that repeated exposure to positive interactions with strangers could encourage more positive attitudes toward social interaction. 1 Ozawa-de-Silva (2021) defines the term “lonely society” as a society that fosters feelings of irrelevance or lack of care due to pre-existing structures that hinder belonging and connectedness. 

In recent years, mindfulness training has become a major trend in popular culture, commonly linked to reduced anxiety and perceived stress. Still, an important question remains: how effective is mindfulness training for college students? The study “Effects of mindfulness training on daily stress response in college students: Ecological momentary assessment of a randomized controlled trial” seeks to answer this. This study aimed to observe the effects of an 8-session mindfulness training program on first-year college students, specifically looking at daily experiences of stress, stress reactivity, and emotional regulation. The Learning 2 Breathe mindfulness program was adapted for college students and focused on increasing awareness of the body, thoughts, and emotions.

Participants recruited were aged 18 years and above, and were diverse by “age, occupation, and ethnicity,” (Clair et al., 2021). Participants completed a 42-question electronic survey that included 20 questions from the Likert scale (which measured the frequency of certain behaviors and satisfaction with lifestyle elements), the UCLA Loneliness Scale, 12 author-designed questions specific to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, and questions to determine life satisfaction and institutional trust. The survey was initially distributed to a broad group of participants, who were then asked to share it with others who might be interested. Participants were asked to fill out an informed consent form prior to completing the survey. Results indicated that life satisfaction deceased for those who experienced greater social isolation. A Kruskal-Wallis test yielded a p-value less than 0.001, and median levels of life satisfaction showed that those with high social isolation experienced ~2.82 scores, while low social isolation participants had a median score of 3.47.

To measure positive emotions and mental health, the researchers used questionnaires. College students were divided into two groups based on how often they ran long distances. Positive emotions were measured at four time points (T1, T2, T3, T4), which represented the start of the study and then 30, 60, and 90 days later. The running group included 52 students at each stage, while the control group included 37 students. Mental health was measured using different dimensions, including depression, obsession‑compulsion, and anxiety. This design allowed the researchers to track how regular long‑distance running might shape both emotional well‑being and mental health over time. When looking at the results for positive emotions, the researchers found that students who ran regularly had higher scores across all measured aspects, including feeling energetic, confident, and relaxed. The only category that did not show much change was the “quietness” category. For mental health, students who did not run or rarely ran had higher scores in almost all of the negative mental health areas. Their scores indicated that their levels of depression and anxiety were above normal. This suggests that students who do not run regularly may be more likely to experience psychological stress. In contrast, students who ran at least once a week had mental health scores within the normal range, indicating healthier mental well‑being. Together, these results show that regular long‑distance running is associated with better mental health and more positive emotional experiences (Feng, Zhou et al. 2020).

So how did the researchers actually study this connection? This prospective study was longitudinal as it followed a group of 10,094 Spanish university graduates from the (Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra) over many years. At baseline, all participants were free from clinical depression and filled out a validated food frequency questionnaire designed to measure adherence to the Mediterranean diet. The adherence was scored from 0 to 9, low to high, based on the consistency of their consumption of key dietary components. Then participants were given the questionnaire periodically over a few years; the duration of this following period varied from participant to participant, but the mean was 4.4 years. The researchers found a clear inverse relationship between how closely the participants followed the Mediterranean diet and their risk of depression. Specifically, their results yielded that those who scored high (6-9 points) on the diet adherence scale had about a 30% lower risk of developing depression compared to those with low adherence (0-3 points). When statistically running these results, the researchers controlled confounding factors such as age, physical activity, smoking, and total energy intake. The protective effect of the diet is thought to stem from its high levels of omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants, and B vitamins, which have been shown to support brain health and reduce inflammation.

This cross-sectional study took place between May and June of 2024 at Noakhali Science and Technology University. Using Cochran’s formula, researchers estimated a sample size of 384; however, to account for non-response, they increased the final sample to 450 students. Participants were then selected through simple random sampling across the university’s facilities and academic levels. Researchers administered a structured questionnaire that included socio-demographic characteristics as well as measures of participants’ perceived stress, nutrition literacy, healthy eating behavior, and physical activity levels using adapted scales (p. 4). As a result, more than half of the students (57.3%) had low nutrition literacy, and 47.6% had poor healthy eating behavior. Although no association between nutrition literacy and physical activity was found, results revealed a significant association between nutrition-related factors and perceived stress, consistent with findings from similar studies. Despite this, this study is limited by its relatively homogeneous sample and reliance on self-reported data.. Nevertheless, Hasan et al. recommend universities make healthy food options more accessible and prioritize nutritional education programs for students.