1 Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Montreal, Québec, Canada.
2 Douglas Group for Sleep and Biological Rhythms, Douglas Mental Health University Institute, Montreal, Québec, Canada.
3 Integrated Program in Neuroscience, McGill University, Montreal, Québec, Canada.
4 Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Montreal, Québec, Canada.

Inactograms and objective sleep measures as means to capture subjective sleep problems in patients with a bipolar disorder.

Bipolar Disord. 2020 Mar 30;:

Authors: Lavin-Gonzalez P, Bourguignon C, Crescenzi O, Beaulieu S, Storch KF, Linnaranta O

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Sleep problems are common in bipolar disorders (BDs). To objectively characterize these problems in BDs, further methodological development is needed to capture subjective insomnia.

AIM: To test psychometric properties of the Athens Insomnia Scale (AIS), and associations with actigraphy-derived measures, applying modifications in actigraphy data processing to capture features of perturbed sleep in patients with a BD.

METHODS: Seventy-four patients completed the AIS and the Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology, self-report (QIDS-SR-16). Locomotor activity was continuously recorded by wrist-actigraphy for =10 consecutive days. We computed the sleep onset/offset, the center of daily inactivity (CenDI), as a proxy for chronotype, and the degree of consolidation of daily inactivity (ConDI), as a proxy for sleep-wake rhythm strength.

RESULTS: AIS showed good psychometric properties (Cronbach's alpha=0.84; test-retest correlation=0.84, p<.001). Subjective sleep problems correlated moderately with a later sleep phase (CenDI with AIS rho=0.34, p=.003), lower consolidation (ConDI with AIS rho=-0.22, p=.05; with QIDS-SR-16 rho=-0.27, p=.019), later timing of sleep offset (with AIS rho=0.49, p= =.001, with QIDS-SR-16 rho=0.36, p=.002), and longer total sleep (with AIS rho=0.29, p=.012, with QIDS-SR-16 rho=0.41, p==.001). While AIS was psychometrically more solid, correlations with objective sleep were more consistent across time for QIDS-SR-16.

CONCLUSIONS: AIS and QIDS-SR-16 are suitable for clinical screening of sleep problems among patients with a BD. Subjective insomnia associated with objective measures. For clinical and research purposes, actigraphy and data visualization on inactograms are useful for accurate longitudinal characterization of sleep patterns.

PMID: 32232937 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]