A human being will experience sleep disturbance resulting from anxiety in his lifespan. These two, anxiety, and sleep disturbance occur co-currently and they are closely associated. The main objective of the study was to find out how perceived anxiety control was related to sleep disturbance. Sleep disturbance in the extent of the study refers to problems initiating and maintaining sleep. This is usually common to people suffering from insomnia, uneven sleep cycles, oversleeping and other related sleep disruptions as in the case of people suffering from paranoia. There is documented evidence that people suffering from insomnia have reduced development. The current study indicates that gender and age were high predictors of depression, anxiety, and sleep disturbance. For instance, for older women and men, sleep and anxiety are closely associated. However, other factors like the ability to control anxiety affect the rate of sleep disturbance. Perceived anxiety control in this context is the extent to which an individual engages in actions or behaviors meant to manage anxiety. In other words, perceived anxiety control is how an individual tries to find ways in which to cope with anxiety. Findings have shown that older adults are able to control their anxiety than younger adults. This evidence bridges the association between age and anxiety further amplifying the relationship between sleep and anxiety. It is for these reasons that the researchers tried to find out how anxiety affects sleep.
To carry out the research they came up with two hypotheses. First, they predicted that older adults experienced worse sleep than younger adults did and secondly that being able to control anxiety contributed to better sleep, greater daytime dysfunction, less sleep medication, and greater sleep efficiency. The research conducted between the years 2007- 2008 and consisted of one hundred and ten participants. The West Virginia University Institutional Review Board approved the research, and the funding came from West Virginia University Alumni Fund. The participants were classified into two groups. Young adults aged between eighteen to thirty years, and older adults of sixty-five years and above. Each was supposed to answer a demographic questionnaire and a self-report measure either by mail or in person. They provided their sex, age, ethnicity, years of education, income and their marital status. They also rated their health using a scale of one to five where five was excellent and their perceived anxiety control (ACQ). Participants also completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), which assessed total sleep time, sleep quality, sleep medication use, sleep disturbance, daytime dysfunction, sleep latency, and symptoms affecting sleep. Of the total, one hundred and ten participants recruited one withdrew by refusing to give consent and six eliminated because they did not return the questionnaire (Gould, Beaudreau, O'Hara " Edelstein, 2015). The total number of young adults who completed the survey was fifty-one young adults and forty-eight older adults. The results were examined by associating the age and ACQ scores with the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index components using linear regression models.
The results showed that young adults had better health compared to older adults. However, the ACQ scores and PSQI did not differ very much for both groups. Greater anxiety control was closely associated with better sleep quality for both groups, therefore, making age and its interactions not significant. When analyzing ACQ scores and PSQI components while adjusting health, showed that old age was associated with better sleep while greater anxiety control contributed to short sleep latency. In both groups, the results showed that greater anxiety control contributed to less daytime dysfunction. When the results were adjusted to accommodate sensitivity analyses, age was considerably associated with sleep quality but not daytime dysfunction. When health was added to the analyses, there was an increase in the association of age with sleep quality and daytime dysfunction. These findings confirmed the first hypothesis that greater anxiety control was associated with better sleep and less use of sleep medications although when health was included as a factor in the analyses, the association decreased. They also refuted the second hypothesis that older adults would have worse sleep compared with young adults. Young age was associated with worse daytime dysfunction and sleep but as the researchers noted, it was because college students made up the majority of the young adult sample.
It is hard to ignore the results because they are from that particular community in West Virginia however, they are not globally factual. There are many reasons contributing to this argument. First, the samples taken ignored the ages of thirty-one to sixty-four. Between these ages, people are struggling with money issues; families and career, therefore, undergo greater anxiety levels. It would have been better if the study considered analyzing their perceived anxiety control and sleep. Secondly, the sample sizes were too small further making the study questionable. Moreover, the ethnicity of both samples had over 93% as Caucasians raising serious questions if other races from different parts of the globe would yield the same figures. Despite these flaws and limitations the study faced, the research was important because it gave a better understanding of how anxiety control affects sleep. In the future, it can be used as a basis for treating anxiety and behaviors that affect sleep.
Reference
Gould, C., Beaudreau, S., O'Hara, R., " Edelstein, B. (2015). Perceived anxiety control is associated with sleep disturbance in young and older adults. Aging " Mental Health, 20(8), 856-860.
