Sleep interventions for adults admitted to psychiatric inpatient settings: a scoping review protocol

The scoping review aims to identify how sleep is measured and what sleep interventions are used effectively in psychiatric inpatient settings. Potential barriers to measuring sleep in inpatient settings will be classified.

Polysomnography has shown that poor sleep is associated with emotional, cognitive, and somatic changes, as well as increased risks in suicide ideation and aggression. People with mental illness often experience sleep disturbances and believe the psychiatric inpatient environment contributes to sleep problems. The use of sleep interventions has been studied widely in general inpatient wards; less is known of similar interventions in psychiatric inpatient settings.

The review will include studies that focus on the effectiveness of sleep interventions for adults in any psychiatric inpatient setting. Studies that focus solely on sleep apnea, parasomnias, or restless legs syndrome will be excluded.

A literature search of PsycINFO, Web of Science, MEDLINE, and Google Scholar will be conducted. Studies identified will be screened and examined against the eligibility criteria. Only studies published in English will be considered, and there will be no date limitation applied to the search. Eligible studies will be assessed for risk of bias and relevant data will be extracted to answer the review questions. Extracted data will be presented in narrative and tabular formats.