Relationship between Sleep Quality and Anxiety-Depressive Disorders in Moroccan Women with Breast Cancer: A Cross-Sectional Study

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is the most common female cancer in the world. Sleep disruption is one of the major problems of breast cancer patients. This study aimed to evaluate the quality of sleep in a group of Moroccan women with breast cancer and analyze the association between sleep quality, depression, and anxiety. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was carried out among 337 Moroccan women treated for breast cancer at the Mohammed VI Cancer Treatment Center in Casablanca in 2019. A questionnaire was designed for this purpose based on two scales: Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale (HADS). RESULTS: 71.5% of the participants had significant sleep disturbances; the subjective quality of patients’ sleep was considered to be quite poor (20.8%) and 43.9% of participants need more than 60 minutes to fall asleep. The average sleep duration was 6.16 h/night and 84.3% of patients had not taken sleep medicines in the last month. The most common reasons for sleep disturbances were getting up to use the bathroom (67.4%) and waking up in the middle of the night or early morning (54%). Anxiety and depression were positively correlated with PSQI scores. CONCLUSION: The present study highlights how much breast cancer patients are vulnerable to psychological disorders and then incites the decision makers in oncology departments to implement rigorous psychological health care strategies in order to ameliorate mental health and sleep quality of breast cancer patients.