Sleep Beliefs, Sleep Characteristics and Circadian Typology in Students of Helping Professions

According to some studies around 70% of the university students report to have some sort of sleep problems at least occasionally. Increased academic and non academic demands and pressures combined with the biological tendency towards more pronounced eveningness and low awareness of sleep hygiene practices, contribute to increased irregularity of sleep patterns, inadequate sleep duration and impaired daytime functioning in these young adults. In this study we wanted to examine how accurate were students’ beliefs about sleep in which way were those beliefs related to their sleep patterns, sleep quality and circadian typology. The study was conducted online among 563 students from seven different study programmes at the University of Zagreb that fell into the category of helping professions. Our results showed that the students of helping professions did not have entirely correct beliefs about sleep. The average percentage of correct sleep beliefs was 61%. The lowest number of students had correct beliefs of positive effect of getting up when it was difficult to fall asleep, negative effect of recovering lost sleep by sleeping for a long time, and negative effect of trying to fall asleep without having a sleep sensation. The results showed that students who assessed they knew more about sleep actually had more accurate sleep beliefs, were older, and had shorter sleep duration and later bedtimes on both school nights and weekend nights. Sleep quality was also better in older students, but was associated with more pronounced morning preferences, and accordingly, longer sleep duration on school nights, earlier wake up times on weekend and earlier bedtimes on both school days and on weekend. Our results indicate that university students, even those with some formal education on sleep physiology and psychology, could benefit from sleep hygiene education programs, for sleep of better quality and duration can increases resilience to academic and non academic stress.