PhD defence M. (Maud) de Feijter

Dissertation in short:

While writing this thesis it became clear to me that poor sleep, specially the subjective experience of poor sleep, is a risk factor for development of mental health problems over time. Even though we still lack understanding on causal directions and potential mediation factors in the association between sleep and mental health, the findings of this thesis confirm that how we sleep objectively and, even more so, how we feel about our sleep are of great importance for a healthy life. To further improve our understanding on the role of sleep in mental health, researchers should dare to step away from conventional methods and try to focus more on early sleep disturbances in the general population and explore new methods such as network analyses. This knowledge, combined with increased awareness of clinicians and health care policy makers about the important role of poor sleep could be an important step in prevention of psychopathology.