{
  "abstract": "Background Growing evidence indicates that mindfulness interventions can enhance sleep outcomes on the long run, yet the temporary effects of brief mindfulness exercises at bedtime remain largely unexplored. The present study aimed to evaluate whether a brief mindfulness induction at bedtime could reduce sleep onset latency (SOL) and improve sleep efficiency (SE) in university students with sleep-onset insomnia.Method Ten female university students (median age = 24 years, IQR = 22-27.75) completed two baseline nights and two counterbalanced experimental nights: one night listening to a mindfulness exercise (experimental condition) and another listening to mind wandering instructions (control condition). SOL and SE were assessed using actigraphy and daily sleep diaries. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were applied to compare differences across conditions, with effect sizes (r) calculated.Results No significant differences were found between the mindfulness and control conditions on either subjective or objective measures of SOL or SE, which might be due to low statistical power. Moderate-to-large effect sizes indicated slightly better SE (subjective) and slightly shorter SOL (objective) on the control than mindfulness night. Relative to baseline, the control condition showed significantly shorter subjective SOL (Z = −2.29, r = −.73) and higher subjective SE (Z = 2.19, r = .69). When comparing the mindfulness to the baseline nights, a non-significant but moderate-sized difference was found on objective SOL with slightly shorter SOL on the mindfulness night.Discussion Preliminary findings indicate that a single mindfulness exercise at bedtime did not reduce SOL or increase SE. The pattern of the preliminary results is that doing an exercise before going to bed seemed to help but contrary to our expectations, the mind wandering instructions seemed to be more helpful than a mindfulness exercise. Our conclusions are limited by the small sample size and reduced statistical power in this study.",
  "authors": [
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "School of Health in Social Science, University of Edinburgh"
      ],
      "name": "Zsofia Takacs"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "School of Health in Social Science, University of Edinburgh"
      ],
      "name": "Maria Gardani"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "School of Health in Social Science, University of Edinburgh"
      ],
      "name": "Qiyue Xiao"
    }
  ],
  "title": "P88 Exploring the effects of a bedtime mindfulness exercise in university students with sleep onset insomnia",
  "uid": "e93662b5-cba6-50a2-abc9-097a60c90312"
}