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Role of Self-Criticism, Anxiety, and Depressive Symptoms in Young Adults’ Insomnia

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Abstract

The interplay between personality and psychopathology in young adults’ insomnia is poorly understood. The authors examined the main-and-interactive role of self-criticism, anxiety, and depressive symptoms in young adults’ insomnia, as well as the potentially mediating role of sleep-related arousal and maladaptive cognitive styles. One hundred sixty-one undergraduate freshmen (Mage = 25.0 years) were assessed twice over 1.5 months, using measures of sleep quality, anxiety, depressive symptomatology, self-criticism, pre-sleep arousal, and mental control strategies. A structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis revealed that anxiety prospectively predicted insomnia, and this effect was mediated by sleep arousal and social avoidance. As well, self-criticism prospectively predicted insomnia under elevated levels of depressive symptoms. In young adults, insomnia treatment should include a routine assessment and intervention with anxiety, depression, and self-criticism.

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Notes

  1. As a part of this study, we also administered the forms of self-criticizing/attacking and self-reassuring scale (FSCRS; Gilbert et al. 2004), which assesses two types of self-criticism: inadequate self and hated self. No results were obtained with this measure, suggesting that the DEQ might be a more sensitive instrument to the assessment of self-criticism, at least in young adults.

  2. Because we had time 2 data on depressive and anxiety symptoms and on self-criticism, we conducted auxiliary analyses in an attempt to examine potential effects of time 1 insomnia symptom severity on changes in these variables over time. Three SEMs were conducted, in which time 2 depressive symptoms/anxiety symptoms/self-criticism served as outcomes, and the predictors were time 1 levels of the outcome and the time 1 latent insomnia variable. No statistically significant effects of time 1 latent insomnia were documented.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 800 Ben-Gurion Avenue, 84105, Beer-Sheva, Israel

    Mor Bar, Gili Schrieber, Noa Gueron-Sela, Golan Shahar & Liat Tikotzky

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  1. Mor Bar
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  2. Gili Schrieber
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  3. Noa Gueron-Sela
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Correspondence to Golan Shahar or Liat Tikotzky.

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Bar, M., Schrieber, G., Gueron-Sela, N. et al. Role of Self-Criticism, Anxiety, and Depressive Symptoms in Young Adults’ Insomnia. J Cogn Ther 13, 15–29 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41811-019-00058-2

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