An international team of scientists from the United States and China found that the beginning or end of a romantic relationship can have a negative impact on the sleep of adolescents, especially young girls. To work published In the scientific journal Behavioral Sleep Medicine (BSM).
A team led by Xiancheng Liu from the University of Pennsylvania in the US followed 7,072 middle and high school students for a year. Participants completed baseline questionnaires about their romantic experiences, insomnia symptoms, and nightly sleep duration. The researchers also collected information on factors such as gender, age, bad habits, families’ socio-economic status, and other data.
After adjusting for variables affecting romantic relationships and/or sleep, Liu and other authors found that entering a relationship for the first time increased the risk of insomnia by 41%, the risk of relationship breakup by 35%, and the combination of both by 45%.
The researchers concluded that romantic relationships not only have a short-term impact on sleep quality and quantity, but are also important determinants of insomnia symptoms, and that a variety of factors, such as life stress, hormonal changes, and psychosocial development, may contribute.
Additionally, the association between romantic involvement and sleep difficulties has been found to be stronger among younger adolescents (under age 15) than among older adolescents (age 15 and over), and is particularly strong among girls.
Psychologists before to create The relationship between the social environment of shy adolescents and the risk of depression.