Insomnia Assessment and Quality of Life
Summary
Insomnia is characterised by difficulties initiating or maintaining sleep despite adequate opportunity, leading to daytime impairment and diminished quality of life. Assessment spans objective techniques such as polysomnography and actigraphy, which capture sleep architecture and movement patterns, and subjective instruments including the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and the Athens Insomnia Scale. These tools evaluate dimensions of sleep latency, duration, efficiency and disturbances. Quantifying insomnia severity underpins understanding of its impact on physical, social and psychological domains of quality of life, encompassing self-reported health, emotional wellbeing, cognitive performance and daily functioning. Recent meta-analyses highlight that persistent insomnia correlates with elevated risks of cardiovascular disease, mood disorders and reduced occupational productivity. Integrative approaches combine sleep diaries with behavioural interventions to personalise cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia, while global epidemiological surveys guide public health strategies aimed at reducing insomnia-related morbidity. This holistic framework emphasises the interplay between precise insomnia measurement and targeted interventions to preserve and enhance quality of life across diverse populations.
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Insomnia Assessment and Quality of Life publication trend
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Technical terms
Polysomnography: An overnight laboratory procedure recording brain waves, muscle activity and respiration to objectively assess sleep stages and disturbances.
Actigraphy: A wrist-worn device that measures movement to estimate sleep–wake patterns over extended periods in a natural setting.
Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI): A self-report questionnaire evaluating subjective sleep quality, duration, latency, efficiency and disturbances over the previous month.
Athens Insomnia Scale (AIS): A brief self-rating instrument measuring the severity of insomnia symptoms based on sleep induction, awakenings and daytime functioning.
Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA): A statistical technique used to test whether observed data fit a hypothesised measurement model, commonly applied to validate the structure of psychometric scales.
References
- Translating and establishing the psychometric properties of the Jenkins Sleep Scale for Arabic-speaking individuals. BMC Psychiatry (2024).
- Association of Subjective Quality and Quantity of Sleep with Quality of Life among a General Population. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2021).
- Sleep quality and subjective well-being in healthcare students: examining the role of anxiety and depression. Frontiers in Public Health (2023).
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