Sleep disturbances, functioning, and quality of life in euthymic patients with bipolar disorder

There is scarce knowledge about the impact of sleep disturbances on functioning and quality of life (QoL). This study aims to investigate the links between sleep satisfaction and duration, and functioning and QoL in euthymic BD patients. We made a secondary analysis of a cross-sectional, naturalistic, multicenter study. Inclusion criteria: DSM-IV BD diagnosis; age > 17 years; written informed consent. Sample: 119 Spanish euthymic BD outpatients. Hierarchical multiple regressions were performed controlling for confounding factors. We found that almost half of the patients reported at least one sleep complaint, nighttime awakenings (60.5%) and difficulty falling asleep (31.9%) were the most frequent. Long sleep duration was associated with worse global functioning, and also with worse occupational functioning along with caffeine consumption. Sleep satisfaction was negatively associated with worse QoL in the mental health subscale and the summary mental. In both cases, the use of benzodiazepines negatively affects these QoL domains. In conclusion, euthymic bipolar patients frequently present sleep disturbances that seem to contribute to the impairment of their functioning and QoL. Also, the use of benzodiazepines negatively affects the QoL of these patients. Thus, a detailed sleep evaluation should be performed, and the use of benzodiazepines should be reduced to the minimum.