Stress and Sleep Dynamics in Young Adults with Psychotic-Like Experiences Across Daily Life

Psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) confer increased risk for adverse mental health outcomes. Sleep disturbances are associated with PLEs, yet evidence largely relies on retrospective assessments and average sleep parameters, limiting insight into daily-life dynamics. Moreover, the roles of stress exposure in sleep-PLEs associations remain insufficiently understood. This study aimed to address these gaps by examining sleep characteristics, momentary stress, and childhood trauma in relation to PLEs using experience sampling. We hypothesized that individuals with PLEs show poorer and more variable sleep, bidirectional sleep-PLEs associations, stronger stress-related sleep disturbances, and trauma-related alterations in sleep regulation.

Altogether, 99 individuals with PLEs and 102 controls completed the experience sampling across 7 consecutive days.

Individuals with PLEs reported poorer average sleep quality, shorter sleep duration, and greater variability in sleep quality, although differences in sleep quality and its variability were attenuated after adjustment for negative affect. Within the PLEs group, sleep quality, but not sleep duration, showed robust bidirectional within-person associations with PLEs. Daily stress fluctuations were not associated with next-morning sleep, whereas higher between-person stress exposure was related to poorer average sleep quality, with no moderation by PLEs group status. Childhood trauma was not significantly associated with sleep outcomes.

Reduced sleep duration might be a stable feature of PLEs independent of negative affect, while sleep quality is dynamically linked to momentary PLEs. Sleep disturbances in individuals with PLEs seem more closely related to symptom dynamics than to momentary stress and distal developmental risk factors.