Background: Poor sleep quality, depression, and anxiety are common comorbidities among individuals with chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs). However, there has been no work to estimate their prevalence and assess their associations among the CRDs population in Saudi Arabia.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in primary healthcare centers and included a total of 390 patients. Structured self-administered questionnaires were completed that included the Sleep Quality Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Score (HADS). Multiple linear regression analyses were performed to assess the associations between patients' characteristics and sleep disturbance, anxiety and depression.
Results: Poor sleep quality, depression, and anxiety affect 75%, 49.2%, and 36.4% of the study participants, respectively. The PSQI was significantly correlated with anxiety (r = 0.30) and depression (r = 0.16). Furthermore, a significant correlation was found between anxiety and depression (r = 0.44). The predictors of poor sleep quality were age, gender, and family history of CRDs, education level and anxiety and these variables accounted for 0.19% of the variance in PSQI. Variables that independently predicted an increased level of depression were age, gender, marital status, family history of CRDs, diagnosis, previous hospital admission, the presence of comorbidities, dyspnea last month and anxiety. On the other hand, the variables that independently predicted an increased level of anxiety were age, BMI, family history of CRDs, previous hospital admission, the presence of comorbidities, dyspnea last month and depression.
Conclusion: Healthcare providers managing patients with CRDs should be alert to the high prevalence of poor sleep quality, depression, and anxiety. Appropriate interventions to reduce the prevalence should be developed and timely applied.
Keywords: anxiety; depression; respiratory diseases; sleep quality.