TY - JOUR
PY - 2023//
TI - Bidirectional associations between posttraumatic stress symptoms and sleep quality among older survivors of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami
JO - Sleep
A1 - Yazawa, Aki
A1 - Shiba, Koichiro
A1 - Shiba Okuzono, Sakurako
A1 - Hikichi, Hiroyuki
A1 - Kawachi, Ichiro
SP - ePub
EP - ePub
VL - ePub
IS - ePub
N2 - STUDY OBJECTIVES: We sought to examine the bidirectional associations between posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and sleep quality in a sample of older disaster survivors.
METHODS: We used 4 waves (2010, 2013, 2016 & 2020) of the Iwanuma Study, which included pre-disaster information and 9-years of follow-up data among older survivors of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. Poisson regression analysis was used to examine the bidirectional associations between sleep problems and PTSS.
RESULTS: Individuals reporting sleep problems before the disaster were more likely to develop PTSS after exposure to disaster trauma, while there was no effect modification, i.e., prevalence ratio for sleep problems did not differ by the magnitude of disaster damages. Individuals reporting sleep problems after the disaster were less likely to recover from PTSS, and more likely to develop delayed onset of PTSS five years after the disaster. While individuals who recovered from PTSS nine years after the disaster were still at slightly higher risk of having sleep problems compared to those who never had PTSS, none of the sleeping problems were found to be significantly prevalent after Bonferroni correction.
CONCLUSIONS: Pre-disaster sleep problems predicted PTSS onset independently of experiences of disaster trauma. The association between PTSS and sleep problems was bidirectional. Intervening to mitigate lingering sleep problems may benefit the recovery of disaster survivors from post-traumatic symptoms.
Language: en
LA - en SN - 0161-8105 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsad106 ID - ref1 ER -