Sleep Health in the Student-Athlete: A Narrative Review of Current Research and Future Directions

Purpose of the Review: Student-athletes face unique challenges around sleep related to combining performance sport and education. This review aims to summarise the available evidence on sleep health in student-athletes, examine the upstream factors that influence sleep health and the downstream consequences that arise from suboptimal sleep health, and provide directions for future research. Recent Findings: Evidence indicates that student-athletes exhibit suboptimal sleep health across multiple dimensions, such as short total sleep durations and irregular sleep timing between days. Various upstream influences, including factors related to sports, academics, and individual characteristics, underpin these observations of suboptimal sleep health. These influences have wide-reaching downstream consequences that may affect athletic performance, concussion and injury risk, academic achievement, and wellbeing. While interventions to improve sleep health have been designed and implemented, their effectiveness remains mixed, highlighting the need for targeted designs that address upstream influences that are specific to student-athletes. Summary: Student-athletes present with suboptimal sleep health across multiple dimensions, which should be addressed to facilitate not only performance on the field and in the classroom, but for health and wellbeing. Future research should aim to provide a more comprehensive understanding of sleep health and the contributing factors that distinguish this population from elite athletes and student peers. Key stakeholders including coaches and academic staff should be made aware of the unique challenges around sleep faced by student-athletes to support the implementation of practical and evidence-based sleep health strategies.