The impact of childhood sexual abuse on sleep in adulthood

It has been documented that people reporting a history of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) tend to report poor sleep quality as adults. However, there are many limitations to this research.

This study examines the relation of CSA to a range of sleep symptoms, addressing some of the limitations of prior research. Moreover, we examined several mechanisms through which CSA might be related to disturbed sleep.

Participants were a community sample of 234 U.S. residents, 124 who self-identified as women, 108 as men, 1 as genderqueer, and 1 who preferred not to say. Ages ranged from 21 to 71 (M = 35.19, SD = 10.42).

Participlants completed online measures of trauma, 21 different aspects of disturbed sleep, health behaviour, and sleep hygiene.

Many of the variables did not meet the assumptions for parametric analyses; therefore, four groups were compared by means of Kruskal-Wallis omnibus tests: CSA, physical abuse (CPA), both CSA and CPA, no childhood trauma or abuse. There were no differences between those reporting CSA versus CPA while all abuse groups differed from those reporting no history of adverse experiences. Indirect effects were assessed using the PROCESS v3.5 Model 4 with 10,000 bootstrapped samples. Recent trauma, engaging in risky behaviours, and poor sleep hygiene all partially accounted for many of the relations between CSA and sleep complaints.

These findings suggest that CSA is a general, non-specific risk factor for sleep disorders; however, this risk might be partially mitigated through improved sleep hygiene and risk management.