Stress Susceptibility Moderates the Relationship Between Eveningness Preference and Poor Sleep Quality in Non-Acute Mood Disorder Patients and Healthy Controls

Abstract

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the relationship between eveningness preference and poor sleep quality and eventually examine the moderation effect of stress susceptibility. Methods: Individuals with non-acute major depressive disorder or bipolar affective disorder and healthy participants were recruited. The Composite Scale of Morningness (CSM) and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) were used to evaluate chronotype and sleep quality, respectively. Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire, Perceived Stress Scale, and Beck Anxiety Inventory were used to formulate stress susceptibility and as indicator variables for empirical clustering by latent class analysis (LCA). Linear regression models were used to examine the relationship between chronotype preference and sleep quality. The interaction terms of CSM and stress susceptibility were examined for the moderation effect. Results: A total of 887 individuals were enrolled in this study, with 68.2% female and 44.1% healthy participants. Three subgroups were derived from LCA and designated as low stresssusceptibility (40.2%), moderate stress susceptibility (40.9%), and high stress susceptibility (18.8%) groups. After controlling for covariates, the CSM scores inversely correlated with PSQI scores [b (se)=− 0.02 (0.01), p =0.01], suggesting that individuals with eveningness preferences tend to have poor sleep quality. Moreover, stress susceptibility moderated the relationship between CSM and PSQI scores ( p for interaction term = 0.04). Specifically, the inverse association between CSM and PSQI was more robust in the high stress susceptibility group than that in the low stress susceptibility group. Conclusion: Eveningness preference was associated with poor sleep quality, and this relationship was moderated by stress susceptibility. Keywords: chronotype, empirical clustering, moderation effect, stress susceptibility, sleep quality