Sleeping Paranoia Away? An Actigraphy and Experience-Sampling Study with Adolescents

Abstract

Paranoid symptoms co-occur with distress and poor functioning and constitute a risk for psychosis and other mental disorders. Poor sleep is known to be associated with paranoid symptoms, but the direction of the effect and the mediating factors have not been studied thoroughly. In an experience-sampling study, 61 adolescents wore an actigraph over eight nights and also rated their sleep, symptoms of paranoia, and potentially mediating factors. Shorter sleep time and more dreaming predicted paranoid symptoms in multilevel regression models. Paranoid symptoms did not significantly predict sleep parameters. Positive and negative affect partially mediated the effect of sleep time on paranoid symptoms. The effects were small, but encourage further research that might then be used to improve the prevention of paranoid symptoms.