196 Sleeping Through a Pandemic: Sleep Health in Adults Around the World During the COVID-19 Lockdown

Abstract

Introduction: The novel COVID-19 disease rapidly escalated into a global pandemic affecting people around the world. While communities imposed mitigation measures to stop the spread of the disease, the mass (home) confinement in addition to the uncertainty of the pandemic led to drastic changes in all aspects of life, including sleep. Sleep health is strongly linked with mental and overall health and could play a protective role against the development of mental distress during the pandemic. Here, we investigated sleep health in a global multicultural sample of adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. Method(s): We surveyed 6,882 adults (18-94 years) across 59 countries about their sleep health (RU-SATED scale), sleep behaviors, demographics, pandemic-related factors, and mood between late April and early May 2020. A hierarchical stepwise multiple linear regression was performed to investigate correlates of sleep health. Result(s): Compared with pre-pandemic times, more than one third of the sample reported an increase in sleep disturbances, and more than half of the sample shifted their sleep schedule towards later bedand wake-up times. Better sleep health was associated with being partnered, older age and living in a higher-income country (p