Having sleep troubles? Try being compassionate to those around you

Being compassionate in life is linked to fewer sleep problems, a study conducted in Finland has found. The researchers concluded that compassion helped dampen symptoms of depression, thus leading to reduced sleep difficulties.

Previous research on sleep focused on factors like depression, stress, pain and physical illness. Later, it was established that healthy behaviour and irregular work conduction also played a key role in determining sleep quality. Now, the path-breaking research has shed light on certain psychological characteristics that might impact an individual’s sleep cycle. One such characteristic is compassion.

Compassion is a deep and genuine concern for the well-being and suffering of others, coupled with a desire to alleviate their pain or distress.

More details about the study

The study, led by Iina Tolonen and her team, aimed to investigate the connection between compassion and various sleep quality indicators.

They sought to determine whether individuals with high levels of compassion tend to sleep better and more, and whether (lack of) compassion can predict the likelihood of developing sleep problems, over 11 years.

Additionally, the researchers were interested in exploring whether compassion influences the reduction of sleep difficulties or if it's the other way around.

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To conduct their research, they utilised data from the Young Finns Study, which began in 1980 in Finland and spanned 37 years. This long-term study involved periodic data collection and initially included 3,596 participants.

Finnish children aged 3 to 18 years, born between 1962 and 1977, were chosen to represent the Finnish population accurately.

Results

The results showed that individuals with elevated compassion levels generally had fewer sleep deficiencies and fewer sleep disturbances.

They also revealed that better compassion was linked to fewer sleep problems even after 11 years.

“Using a comparatively large population-based sample, we found that high compassion was cross-sectionally associated with better sleep, including lesser perceived sleep deficiency and fewer sleep difficulties,” the study authors concluded.

“Compassion was not associated with sleep duration (i.e., the likelihood of being a short or long sleeper). High compassion also longitudinally predicted fewer sleep difficulties over the 11-year follow-up. We also found that the effect of compassion on most sleep indicators (with the exception of sleep difficulties in the cross-sectional analysis) disappeared after controlling for depressive symptoms, possibly implying that depressive symptoms mediate the pathway from high compassion to fewer sleep issues,” they wrote.

(With inputs from agencies)

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