Poor sleep affects people all over the world and it could impact both physical and mental health. Therefore, understanding the reasons that impacts sleep could highlight ways of how to improve it.
Literature review: The quality of the physical environment could impact health. But little was known about how the physical environment impacted sleep in the long-term. In three databases, 21 cohort and experimental papers were found that assessed this. Fourteen of these papers showed that more noise, air pollution, and negative neighbourhood surroundings, such as crime and disorder, had a negative impact on sleep. Meanwhile, more green spaces, better neighbourhood design and steps taken to reduce noise was linked to better sleep. But there was no link between walkability and sleep. Also, a small number of papers found no links to sleep or that more air pollution was linked to better sleep, probably because they used different approaches to gather information from participants. Still, this suggested that improving the physical environment might lead to better sleep.
Empirical study: Social determinants, meaning social, economic and environmental factors, could impact sleep because they could influence the conditions people live in and access to resources. To understand this better, this study looked at how poor sleep was linked with social determinants and mental health difficulties in 2513 people. This showed that having support and higher age was linked to better sleep. While difficulties with paying for necessities, being female, financially secure, and having a minority sexual orientation was linked to worse sleep, possibly because of stress. Poor sleep also impacted the connection between worse mental health and these factors too, but ethnicity and declared religion was not linked to sleep or mental health. This pointed out that making improvements in society might improve sleep and therefore also mental health.
