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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Sleep
Sec. Sleep, Behavior and Mental Health
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsle.2025.1516094
From Sleeplessness to Solitude: Emotional Repair as a Buffer Between Insomnia and Loneliness in University Students
Provisionally accepted- 1 Middlebury College, Middlebury, United States
- 2 Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, United States
- 3 University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont, United States
Loneliness and insomnia are endemic in college students, and emotion regulation is strongly related to both. Starting with a biopsychosocial framework, the present study tested a model in which emotional repair mediated the relationship between loneliness and insomnia, with the goal of using a potential mechanism of action to address loneliness. Participants were undergraduate students (N=1,513) in the United States who completed a survey including the Trait Meta-Mood Scale, Sleep Condition Indicator, and UCLA Loneliness Scale, amongst other measures. Insomnia had a significant total negative effect on loneliness, B = -0.46, 95% CI [-0.54, -0.39]. Emotional repair partially mediated this relationship, with an indirect effect of B = 0.015, 95% CI [-0.19, -0.12]. Participants with better sleep were more able to regulate their emotions, and thus tended to experience lower levels of loneliness. Treating insomnia (e.g., CBT-I) or skills associated with emotional repair and regulation (e.g., transdiagnostic approaches to emotion regulation) could reduce overall loneliness.
Keywords: Sleep, insomnia, Loneliness, Emotion Regulation, Emotional repair, college students
Received: 23 Oct 2024; Accepted: 17 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ostrow, Rieur, Moeller and Seehuus. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Robert W Moeller, Middlebury College, Middlebury, United States
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