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Personality Disorders

The influence of sleep on emotion dysregulation in borderline personality disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and healthy controls

(PS7-81) The Influence of Sleep on Emotion Dysregulation in Borderline Personality Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Healthy Controls

Saturday, November 16, 2024
8:30 AM – 9:30 AM EST
Location: Franklin Hall, Level 4, Marriott Downtown
Abstract Text:

Background: Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a severe condition characterized by emotion dysregulation, comprising heightened emotional reactivity, prolonged recovery from emotions, and deficits in emotion regulation. Therefore, it is important to identify what factors can be targeted to improve emotion dysregulation and optimize treatment outcomes. Sleep plays a vital role in healthy emotion regulation. Disruptions to sleep such as a disproportionate ratio of time asleep in bed compared to total time in bed (i.e., poor sleep efficiency), or a misalignment of biological sleep-wake timing with societal demands, as well as subjective perceptions of sleep quality may contribute to emotion dysregulation. However, the specific impact of these sleep disruptions on emotion dysregulation in BPD and in clinical groups more broadly remains unclear. The present study therefore investigated whether sleep efficiency, chronotypes, and sleep quality predict emotion dysregulation components in individuals with BPD, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and a healthy control (HC) group.

Methods: Participants in all groups (N = 120; n = 40 per group) completed sleep measures daily for seven days prior to undergoing an experiment. During the experiment, baseline negative emotion, emotional reactions to stressors (i.e., reactivity), and their ability to modulate emotions using mindfulness and distraction techniques (i.e., emotion regulation) were evaluated across self-reported, sympathetic, and parasympathetic emotion responses.

Results: Across all groups, multilevel models revealed that earlier chronotypes predicted lower self-reported baseline negative emotions (B=0.36, p=.002), while higher sleep quality predicted less self-reported baseline negative emotion (B=0.28, p=.026) and more effective parasympathetic emotion regulation (B=0.12, p=.023). Among HCs specifically, poorer sleep efficiency (B=-0.60, p=.042) and lower sleep quality (B=0.51, p=.015) predicted lower parasympathetic baseline negative emotion, and poorer sleep efficiency predicted elevated self-reported baseline negative emotion (B=-0.90, p=.004). Additionally in HCs, earlier chronotype was associated with enhanced sympathetic emotion regulation (B=-0.42, p=.001). However, these effects were not present for those with BPD. Implications: Overall, these results highlight the influence of sleep on emotion dysregulation. Specifically, enhancing sleep quality and aligning chronotype with daily routines could potentially ameliorate negative baseline emotional states and improve emotion regulation across groups. Notably, HCs may exhibit heightened susceptibility to deviations in sleep efficiency. These findings underscore the potential of tailored interventions to alleviate emotion dysregulation by targeting subjective and circadian sleep disruptions across clinical and non-clinical populations.