Citation

Koren D, Arnon I, Lavie P, Klein E. Am. J. Psychiatry 2002; 159(5): 855-857.

Affiliation

Department of Psychiatry, Rambam Medical Center, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2002, American Psychiatric Association)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

11986142

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Disturbed sleep is a common complaint among patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that appears in the reexperiencing and hyperarousal symptom clusters in DSM-IV. The causal relationship between sleep complaints and PTSD is unclear. METHOD: Self-reported insomnia and excessive daytime sleepiness were assessed in 102 victims of motor vehicle accidents and 19 comparison subjects 1 week and 1, 3, 6, and 12 months after the trauma. At 12 months the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R was administered to determine diagnoses of PTSD. RESULTS: Twenty-six of the accident victims but none of the comparison subjects met the criteria for PTSD. Logistic regression models indicated that sleep complaints from 1 month on were significant in predicting PTSD at 1 year. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that on the basis of sleep complaints as early as 1 month after the trauma, it is possible to detect subjects who will later develop chronic PTSD.

Language: en