Actigraphic and Self-reported Sleep in Traffic Accident Victims

Abstract

Background: Some accident victims report poorer sleep during the months after the trauma, which may double the risk for and is a mediator of the development of a PTSD. Furthermore, subjective and objective sleep measures are often discrepant in PTSD-patients, which is why a ‘sleep state misperception’ of PTSD patients is often hypothesized. Objective: The goal of this study is to assess differences in sleep quality in victims of a traffic accident compared to healthy participants without an accident history as well as differences between objective and subjective sleep quality measures. Methods: We recruited 25 hospitalized accident victims within ten days of an accident and 31 age and sex-matched controls without an accident history. Three months later, participants were given a structured clinical interview (SCID), they completed the Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) for the previous two weeks, wore a wrist actigraph, and kept a sleep log for two consecutive nights. Results: At the three-month follow-up, none of the victims met the criteria for any kind of mental disorder, but scored higher on the Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale. On the PSQI they reported slightly worse sleep than controls for the previous two weeks, although sleep log and actigraphy measures on the two recording nights showed no group differences. Actigraphy measures showed shorter sleep onset latencies compared to log measures. Conclusions: The accident victims suffered only minimal sleep disturbances three months later. The assumption of a ‘sleep state misperception’ in traffic accident victims is questioned by these results.