Associations of sleep with everyday mood, minor symptoms and social interaction experience.

Although there are strong popular beliefs about the value of a good night's sleep, there is very little documented evidence of day-to-day relations between sleep and well-being. In this study, covariations between sleep and both prior and subsequent daily states of well-being were studied in a healthy, employed sample. Thirty volunteers used pocket computers to complete a daily sleep diary and self-rating scales of mood, minor symptoms and social interaction experience. These were recorded every 2 hours for 14 days except during sleep periods. A pooled regression analysis showed small but significant relationships between many of the sleep and well-being measures. Sleep appeared to be more strongly related to subsequent well-being than prior well-being. An earlier onset of sleep was associated with better mood and social interaction experience the following day and was a better predictor than sleep duration. This result was interpreted to be consistent with the phase angle model of chronobiologic mood disorders. In general, the results suggest that the sleep disturbances found in affective disorders may not be pathological but instead represent the extremes of normal relationships between sleep and well-being.