People with sleep apnoea are at a higher risk of mental health problems

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-12-27 03:00

International

Photo by Nicholas Gray on Unsplash. Story by Rachel McDonald, Australian Science Media Centre

Sleep apnoea is consistently linked to about a 40% higher chance of having mental health problems, according to international research. The team used data from a long-term aging study in Canada to identify older people who likely had sleep apnoea. Almost 28,000 older Canadians were followed for an average of nearly three years, about 7500 of whom likely had sleep apnoea. Looking at various indicators of mental health problems, the researchers say sleep apnoea was linked to about a 40% higher chance of having a mental health problem at the beginning of the study, and a 44% higher chance of mental health problems at the end of the study. They say this shows the link between sleep apnoea and mental health is likely consistent over time.

Journal/
conference: JAMA Network Open

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Canada

Funder: This project is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Catalyst Grant: Analysis of Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) Data (2022-09-08). This research was made possible using the data/biospecimens collected by the CLSA (ie, collection). Funding for the CLSA is provided by the Government of Canada through the CIHR under grant reference: LSA 94473 and the Canada Foundation for Innovation, as well as the following provinces, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, and British Columbia. This research has been conducted using the CLSA datasets (Baseline Comprehensive, version 7.0 and Follow-up 1, version 5.0), under Application Number 23CA001.

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