Association of traumatic police event exposure with sleep quality and quantity in the BCOPS Study cohort.

Apr 9, 2014International journal of emergency mental health

Link between traumatic police events and sleep quality and amount in BCOPS study participants

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Circadian Biology on OpenScience ↗PubMed ↗

Abstract

Significant associations were found between traumatic events and sleep quality among 372 police officers.

In men, exposure to the 'shooting of another officer' was associated with poorer sleep quality and increased sleep disturbances.
For women, seeing more 'abused children' correlated with poorer sleep quality, while more frequent exposure to 'victims of serious traffic accidents' linked to shorter sleep duration.
Increased frequency of 'seeing dead bodies' was associated with poorer sleep quality and shorter sleep duration for both men and women.
Among women with high workloads, seeing 'serious traffic accident victims' was inversely associated with global sleep quality.

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Police officers are exposed to traumatic and life-threatening events, which may lead to sleep problems. Prior studies of police officers have found them to have poor sleep quality and reduced sleep time. This study examined associations between traumatic events and sleep quality. Participants were 372 police officers from the Buffalo Cardio-metabolic Occupational Police Stress (BCOPS) Study. Police incidents were measured by the Police Incident Survey; sleep quality and quantity were derived from the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to examine mean PSQI scores across categories of traumatic event frequency. Models were adjusted for age, education and ethnicity and stratified by sex and workload. In men, significant associations were found for the 'shooting of another officer' and sleep quality (p-value = 0.024) and sleep disturbances (p-value = 0.022). In women, seeing more 'abused children' was associated with poorer sleep quality (p-value = 0.050); increasing frequency of 'seeing victims of a serious traffic accident' was associated with shorter sleep duration (p-value = 0.032). Increased frequency of 'seeing dead bodies' was associated with poorer sleep quality (p-value = 0.040) and shorter sleep duration (p-value = 0.048). Among women with a high workload, a significant inverse association was found between 'seeing serious traffic accident victims' and global sleep quality (p-value = 0.031). In conclusion, a significant inverse association between frequency of select traumatic events and sleep quality was found in male and female police officers. The significant events differed by sex. Future research could examine longitudinal associations between career-long traumatic event exposures and sleep quality and how these associations differ by sex.

Association of traumatic police event exposure with sleep quality and quantity in the BCOPS Study cohort.

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