Adolescent sleep and mental health in times of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic caused major changes in public and private life, especially for adolescents. As a result, the mental health and sleep of many adolescents were significantly impaired, although some adolescents report also positive sleep changes.

The present study investigates how adolescents with positive subjective COVID-19-related sleep changes (CSC), without CSC, or with negative CSC differ in terms of their sleep parameters, resources, and mental health profiles.

Self-reports of 92 German adolescents (mean age 14.43 ± 1.69 years; 54% female) on mental health were collected before pandemic onset (T1; July 2019–March 2020) and during the pandemic (T2; June 2020–February 2021).

A profile analysis indicated different profile patterns for adolescents with positive, negative, and no CSC, revealing decreased sleep onset latency, pre-sleep arousal, and stress experiences, and higher quality of life, sleep-related self-efficacy, and personal resources in adolescents with subjective positive CSC. However, no differences between T1 and T2 were found for mental health parameters, indicating that higher levels partly existed even before the pandemic.

Subjectively evaluated sleep improvements occur in conjunction with better mental health and personal resources, underscoring the need for holistic prevention. Accordingly, personal and sleep-specific resources should be strengthened in a targeted manner.