SCIENCE / SUMMARY / TÜRKİYE

How many adults in Istanbul sleep poorly?

SINGLE STUDY · CROSS SECTIONAL ■■□□ low evidence: one point in time and self report; some table figures do not match

Who: Adults aged 20 and over living in urban and rural Istanbul. A multistage stratified random sample of 3,200 people was approached and 2,624 (82%) completed the survey: 1,420 men and 1,204 women. Data were collected throughout 2022, after pandemic restrictions had been lifted.
What they did: Participants completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, the short World Health Organization quality of life scale, a fatigue scale, and anxiety, depression and stress scales. Sleep scores of 5 or less counted as good, 6 to 8 as average and 9 or more as poor. A stepwise regression adjusted for age and sex looked at factors that went together with sleep quality.
What they found: The share in the poor range was 32.8% in men and 38.5% in women (Table 3). The table by sleep group puts 902 people in the poor, 830 in the average and 892 in the good group (Table 6). In the model, stress, depressive and anxiety symptoms, fatigue, and the physical, psychological and environmental domains of quality of life went together with sleep quality. The authors argue that poor sleep stayed common after the pandemic and should be a public health priority.
Limits: As the authors note: a cross sectional design cannot show cause and effect; all measures were self reported, with no clinical assessment; recall and selection bias are possible. From our own reading: some tables do not agree (men and women in the poor group add up to 929 in Table 3, while Table 6 gives 902); significance was defined as p < 0.01, yet values between 0.01 and 0.05 are also reported as significant; the PHQ-15 used as a depression screen is in fact a scale of bodily symptoms. The rates are best read as approximate. No commercial interests were declared; the first author was on the journal's editorial board at submission; no separate funding was reported.

What does this mean for you?

If you are unhappy with your sleep, you are far from alone; in this study one in three people were in a similar range. If poor sleep lasts or affects your days, that may be a reason to talk with a doctor. This is not advice.

Link to Nefesly: One of the studies we rely on when describing how common poor sleep is in Türkiye; background for why Nefesly is about sleep at all. It is not a health claim. How we built it (Turkish)
Reference: Bener A, Morgul E, Tokaç M, Ventriglio A, Jordan TR. Sleep quality, quality of life, fatigue, and mental health in COVID-19 post-pandemic Türkiye: a cross-sectional study. Frontiers in Public Health. 2024;12:1250085. doi:10.3389/fpubh.2024.1250085 · Open access (CC BY).
Why chosen: One of 15 sources chosen from 403 candidates on the Türkiye and guidelines axis; included as the largest randomly sampled adult sleep quality study in the pool.
Summarised by: Nefesly, from the full text, 11 October 2026. Awaiting clinician check.
Copyright: Summarised from the full text, not translated from the abstract.