ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Aging Psychiatry
A Network Analysis of Sleep Quality, Cognitive Function, and Depressive Symptoms among Community-Dwelling Older Adults
Provisionally accepted
- 1Bengbu Medical College, Bengbu, China
- 2the Fourth People's Hospital of Wuhu, Wuhu, China
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Background: Many countries, including China, are facing rapid population aging. Among middle-aged and older adults, depressive symptoms and sleep disturbances are both associated with cognitive impairment. Therefore, this study aims to examine the relationships among sleep, depression, and cognitive function in older adults. Method: We recruited 457 old people over the age of 60 from the Matang community of Wuhu to participate in this cross-sectional study. We utilized the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) to measure our participants, with 126 individuals completing all of them. We used this collected data for network analysis to identify the bridge symptoms in the MMSE-PSQI-GDS network by calculating the bridge centrality. Results: The core symptom of MMSE, GDS and PSQI network was “SSQ” (subjective sleep quality). The bridge symptoms in MMSE, GDS and PSQI were “GDS” and “OR” (orientation). Among the symptoms, “GDS” had the highest bridge centrality. The edge connecting nodes “HSE” (habitual sleep efficiency) and “USM” (used sleep medication) had the strongest weight (0.67) around all the symptoms of PSQI. Nodes “AC” (attention and calculation) and “RG” (registration) had the strongest weight (0.48), connecting all the symptoms of MMSE. Conclusions: This study highlights the central role of subjective sleep quality and the bridging role of depression in the interconnected network of cognition, sleep, and mood in older adults. These findings suggest that interventions targeting sleep quality and depressive symptoms may have broad benefits for cognitive function and overall mental health. By identifying key symptom interactions, this network-based approach provides guidance for prioritizing assessment and intervention strategies in geriatric populations.
Keywords: Cognitive Function, Depression, Network analysis, Old adult, sleep quality
Received: 31 Oct 2025; Accepted: 31 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Yu and Cai. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Han Cai
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