Sleeping an extra 29 minutes at night is key to improving mental wellbeing, a new study has suggested.
Researchers from the University of South Florida discovered that better sleep improves mindfulness the following day, which has significant mental health benefits.
The team focused on nurses for the study, as they are the largest group of healthcare professionals who need optimal sleep at night-time. They identified that sleep problems are common among nurses, especially during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, which is putting pressure on healthcare services around the world.
They followed 61 nurses for two weeks, analysing their sleep health, and found that mindfulness was higher when nurses had an extra half an hour of sleep. And those with better mental wellbeing were 66 per cent less likely to experience symptoms of insomnia.
Participants were also asked to answer daily mindfulness and sleepiness questions three times a day for two weeks, which included questions such as, “I was doing something automatically, without being aware of what I was doing,” and “I was finding it difficult to stay focused on what was happening.”
Lead author Soomi Lee said that their findings could provide an insight into developing better strategies for healthcare workers to improve their mental wellbeing.
“One can be awake and alert, but not necessarily mindful,” she explained. “Mindful attention is beyond being just being awake. It indicates attentional control and self-regulation that facilitates sensitivity and adaptive adjustment to environmental and internal cues, which are essential when providing mindful care to patients and effectively dealing with stressful situations.”
