There is an extremely high prevalence of sleep disturbances in
U.S. soldiers returning from wartime deployment, according to a
research abstract that will be presented Tuesday, June 8, 2010,
in San Antonio, Texas, at SLEEP 2010, the 24th annual meeting of
the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC. Results
indicate that 86 percent of participants had sleep disturbances
upon return from deployment and 45 days later even though the
majority of them had no signs of post-traumatic stress disorder
or depression. Soldiers were more likely to have sleep
disturbances if they had a personal history of sleep problems,
symptoms of physical illness or mild traumatic brain injury.
"This is the first study to describe the prevalence of sleep
disturbances at two different time points in soldiers returning
from deployment without any apparent physical trauma from blasts
or amputation," said principal investigator Major Betty Garner,
PhD, a nurse scientist in the Nursing Research Office at
Landstuhl Regional Medical Cent