Title

Personality and Lifestyle in Older Good and Poor Sleepers

Abstract

To understand why the magnitude of the sleep complaint does not match the psychophysiological deficit in older individuals, as it usually does in younger adults, we need to identify those factors which differentiate older individuals who do and those who do not complain of insomnia. The objective of the present study was to explore the relationship between psychological adjustment, personality, and lifestyle factors on the one hand, and sleep parameters on the other, in good sleepers and in poor sleepers who are either highly distressed or minimally distressed by their disrupted sleep.

A sample of 189 good and poor sleepers was recruited from the community (mean age = 70). Poor sleepers had experienced insomnia for a mean of 15 years. Subjects completed an extensive battery of questionnaires assessing sleep characteristics, socioeconomic, psychological, and physical health factors. The following sleep behaviors were evaluated: time spent in bed, total sleep time, duration and frequency of nocturnal arousals, sleep medication use, usual, earliest and latest bedtimes and arising times during a typical week, daytime fatigue due to lack of sleep, and frequency of: naps, experienced difficulty falling asleep, getting back to sleep after nocturnal awakenings, and falling asleep after waking up too early. Subject also indicated how frequently each of three sleep problems (sleep onset, maintenance, terminal insomnia) was accompanied by feelings of distress. Participants' self-efficacy beliefs related to falling asleep were also evaluated. In addition, the test battery included a range of psychological adjustment and cognitive style measures, both state and trait. Subjective well-being and the nature, quality and regularity of respondents' daytime activities were also assessed.

The following results were obtained:

(a) Good Sleepers clearly experienced better sleep than either group of Poor Sleepers. On sleep parameters, the two Poor Sleeper groups resembled each other closely.
(b) Good and Poor sleepers were not found to differ on any of the lifestyle variables investigated: Diversity of Daily Activities, Level of Busyness, Regularity of Lifestyle (meals, bedtimes, arising times), Sleep Lifestyle Factors (time to bed, time out of bed, hours spent in bed, naps per week), Demographic and Socioeconomic Factors (age, education, income, life events).
(c) Low Distress Poor Sleepers reported slightly better sleep than the High Distress Poor Sleepers, but they differed substantially on adjustment factors and in their affective response to sleep disruption.

Our results suggest that the "Low Distress Poor Sleeper" configuration of sleep characteristics is critical to understanding the complaint of insomnia. Since people in this category appear to be coping well with the psychophysiological changes in sleep architecture which typically accompany aging, their cognitive-affective patterns have implications for the treatment of insomnia in older individuals.

Author

Fichten, Catherine S., Creti, L. and Libman, Eva

Source

Proceedings: 8th Annual Meeting of the Association of Professional Sleep Societies, 1994, p. 2. Reprinted in Sleep Research, 23, p. 196.