Emotion regulation, negative affect and insomnia

Objectives: In the present two-wave prospective study, we examined how and to what extent emotion regulation (reappraisal and suppression) and a measure of negative affect are associated with insomnia complaints. Methods: Two hundred and forty-eight participants in apparent good health (mean age: 26.4 ± 7.7). Data collected at T1 and after two months (T2) included: 1. Vital Exhaustion (VE; Appels et al, 1987) measures negative affect through questions concerning feelings of fatigue, scarce energy and demoralization; 2. Emotional Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ; Gross, John, 2003): this questionnaire contains items regarding reappraisal and suppression, the prevalent emotional strategy is defined on the basis of the difference between the two scales; 3. Life Events: based on a check list of 18 stressors. We calculated the difference at T2 and T1. 4. Sleep Disorder Questionnaire (SDQ, Violani et al., 2004): based on this brief questionnaire we evaluated the presence of insomnia according to DSM-IV criteria and its impact through the number of daytime consequences Results: Through hierarchical regression analyses (HRAs) we have examined how life events, negative affect and the prevalent use of two emotion regulation strategies, reappraisal and suppression, predict across-time changes in the impact of insomnia measured at T2. In the first block we included the insomnia impact measured at T1, while in the second block we entered the two way interactions between the predictors. The first block (F4,204 = 20.57; P < 0.001) accounted for the 28.7% of the variance and insomnia measured at T1 was the only significant predictor beta = 0.48). The second block accounted for a significant portion of variance (R2change = 0.045, P = 0.02; F9,199 = 11.00; P < 0.001; 33% total variance); significant effects were: insomnia measured at T1 beta = 0.59), the two-way interaction between insomnia measured at T1 and life events beta = 0.16), and the two way interaction between insomnia and vital exhaustion (beta = -0.17). Conclusion: At time 2 the impact of insomnia is mostly associated with the impact of insomnia at time 1; this association is exacerbated by stressing life events. Furthermore at T2 insomnia will get worse among subjects who at T1 have a low impact of insomnia and high Vital Exhaustion.