The relationship between sleep and suicide

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This research highlights how sleep can be understood both as a background factor contributing to suicide risk and as part of the response to that risk.

Research Update

Article: Excessive daytime sleepiness mediates the relationship between insomnia symptoms and suicidal behavior in adolescents (Liu, Jia, Liu 2022)

Takeaway: Getting enough sleep has a large impact on a wide range of psychological and physical conditions, with insomnia and excessive daytime sleepiness being associated with increased risk of suicidal behavior in a recent study in China.

Article: Sleep and suicide: A systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal studies (Liu, Steele, Hamilton, Do, et al. 2022)

Takeaway: This review provides a meta-analysis of 41 studies, concluding that sleep disturbance can have significant effects on suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

Article: Sleep influences daily suicidal ideation through affective reactivity to interpersonal events among high-risk adolescents and young adults (Hamilton, Tsypes, Zelazny, Sewall, et al. 2022)

Takeaway: Lack of sleep can affect suicidal ideation in adolescents by increasing reactions to interpersonal events. Shorter-than-usual periods of sleep were found to predict both the presence and intensity of suicidal ideation the following day by increasing reactivity to negative events, while lower sleep quality also predicted next-day ideation by reducing reactivity to positive events.

Article: A Comprehensive Review of the Literature on Sleep Difficulties and Suicidality in Youth to Inform an Integrative Developmental Model and Future Directions (Goldstein & Franzen, 2022)

Takeaway: This review contains a deep and broad overview of all the recent research into sleep and its relation to suicide. It’s a great starting point for anyone who wants to start thinking about the subject.

Article: Small shifts in diurnal rhythms are associated with an increase in suicide: The effect of daylight saving (Berk, Dodd, Hallam, Berk, Gleeson, & Henry, 2008)

Takeaway: People who already have mental health vulnerabilities can be destabilized by small shifts in sleep patterns. Negative outcomes can follow from shifts as small as the twice-yearly changing of the clocks associated with daylight saving.

Article: Sleep, suicide behaviors, and the protective role of sleep medicine (Bishop, Walsh, Ashrafioun, Lavigne, & Pigeon, 2020)

Takeaway: This study reports that veterans with sleep problems who had sleep medicine visits showed reduced frequency of suicide attempts. This suggests that more aggressive attempts to treat sleep problems can have a direct protective role in reducing suicide.

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