Screening tools for sleep disorders in patients with psychiatric disorders

Jun 16, 2026L'Encephale

Tools for identifying sleep problems in people with mental health conditions

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Circadian Biology on OpenScience ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Abstract

This review identifies multiple questionnaires for assessing sleep disturbances in psychiatric populations.

Sleep patterns are often altered in patients with psychiatric disorders, which may worsen symptoms or impact treatment.
A proposed minimal sleep semiology framework categorizes sleep issues into various types, including non-specific complaints, symptoms, and specific disorders.
Generic tools like the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index offer a broad evaluation of sleep health, while specific instruments target particular sleep dimensions.
Integrating sleep questionnaires with patient history and environmental context may enhance diagnosis and management.
Combining subjective sleep measures with objective assessments could improve overall sleep health and psychiatric care.

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Sleep and mental health are closely interconnected. Alterations in sleep patterns are frequent among patients with psychiatric disorders and can exacerbate symptom severity or interfere with treatment outcomes. Despite this, systematic sleep assessment is not consistently integrated into psychiatric practice. This review presents a comprehensive overview of the main questionnaires available to assess sleep and its disturbances in psychiatric populations. We propose a minimal sleep semiology framework that includes non-specific sleep complaints (satisfaction, non-restorative sleep), sleep symptoms (insomnia, hypersomnolence), sleep-related distress/impairments, specific sleep disorders (sleep-related breathing disorders, sleep-related movement disorders, parasomnias), sleep needs (chronotype, flexibility) and behaviors (duration, timing, regularity, hypnotic use). Generic questionnaires, such as the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and the RU-SATED scale, provide a global view of sleep health, while disorder-specific instruments allow precise evaluation of particular dimensions. This review allows for the selection of the most appropriate tool for specific applications in both clinical and research settings. Integrating these questionnaires with patient history and environmental context enables a holistic approach, improving both diagnosis and management. Ultimately, combining these subjective measures with objective assessments while considering environmental, social, and behavioral factors facilitates the promotion of sleep health, thereby enhancing psychiatric care and potentially benefiting population-level mental health.

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Screening tools for sleep disorders in patients with psychiatric disorders

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