0264 Childhood Adversity And Adult Sleep: The Role Of Deprivation And Threat

Abstract

Abstract Introduction There are robust associations between childhood adversity (CA) and poor physical health in adulthood. Sleep is a possible mechanism linking CA to adult health. The prevailing approach for testing associations between CA and adult sleep offers little insight into which aspects of CA are related to specific sleep outcomes. To better understand associations between CA and adult sleep outcomes, we tested a conceptual model that distinguishes between threat (e.g. physical, emotional and sexual abuse), and deprivation (e.g. emotional and physical neglect). Methods Participants (N= 79; Mage = 27.48(SD=6.53); 68% Female) were screened for insomnia disorder, mental health conditions and physical illnesses. Participants completed demographic and depressive symptom measures, along with the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, a self-report retrospective measure that captures dimensions of threat and deprivation. Sleep duration, latency, efficiency, wake after sleep onset (WASO), and secondary sleep onset latency (SSOL) were averaged across 3 consecutive days of wrist actigraphy and sleep diaries. Daily ratings of sleep-quality, non-restorative sleep, alcohol use and current stress were averaged across 3 days. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to account for missing data. All SEM models included correlated measures of deprivation and threat along with age, sex, BMI, alcohol use, daily stress, and depressive symptoms. Results In SEM models, threat was significantly positively associated with non-restorative sleep (b = .046, p <.001) and sleep quality (b=.025, p=.008), but unrelated to all other diary-based and actigraphy-based sleep measures (ps > .05). Deprivation was significantly negatively associated with diary-based WASO (b = -.076, p = .003) and SSOL, but unrelated to all other diary-based and actigraphy-based sleep measures (ps > .05). Conclusion These results begin to clarify associations between related, but distinct forms of CA and specific adult sleep outcomes. Identifying specific pathways linking CA and adult health is critical for developing interventions and mitigating future health risk. Support (If Any) This study was funded by a Funding Incentive Seed Grant from the University of Utah, the Mind and Life Institute, and Division 38 of the American Psychological Association.