Sleep and related disorders

Sleep research in psychology examines how sleep duration, quality, and timing relate to cognitive functioning, emotional regulation, and physical health outcomes such as cardiovascular disease, metabolic disorders, and depression. Chronic insomnia, which affects a substantial portion of the adult population, has become a focal point for both epidemiological work—mapping who is affected and under what conditions—and clinical intervention, particularly cognitive behavioral therapy, which has emerged as a first-line treatment supported by robust meta-analytic evidence. Researchers also invest considerable effort in psychometric evaluation, working to establish which self-report and actigraphy-based measures most accurately capture what happens during the night. Open questions include how circadian misalignment interacts with insomnia vulnerability across the lifespan, and whether the health consequences attributed to short sleep reflect sleep itself or the underlying psychological and physiological processes that disrupt it.

Works

96,246

Total citations

1,898,357

Keywords

InsomniaSleep DurationCognitive Behavioral TherapySleep QualityMeta-AnalysisEpidemiology