Lay summary
Up to 40% of university students struggle with chronic sleep disturbances; often attributed to depression and anxiety. Poor sleep appears to be a strong predictive factor for emotional distress. Understanding sleep quality is important to making mental health diagnoses. Despite this, young adults in Aotearoa don’t access mental health support for many reasons – financial, cultural/language barriers, or not knowing where to go being some.
Current evidence suggests mobile phone apps for health can create positive behavioural changes and are a way to provide support that is likeable and accessible enough to be used regularly. Story-listening as a sleep aid is widely used yet no research exists regarding its effectiveness. We aim to design a new digital health app alongside emotionally at-risk university students to ensure the app meets their needs, then assess whether we can influence emotional wellbeing through better sleep. Evidence generated will determine viability of future studies.