[Sleep disorders in professional man and women and their relationship to the workplace]

In Switzerland as well as in many other industrialized countries, sleep disturbances are among the most prevalent health problems. Reliable knowledge about the social and personal conditions of sleep disturbances and especially about their association with conditions is however limited. Using data from the Bern workplace Health Project ("Härz-AsProjekt", n = 774) a logistic regression model was applied to study the association between an indicator of sleep disturbances composed both of problems falling asleep and problems waking-up during the night and several work-related factors. Sleep disturbances were found to be directly associated with perceived work load, time pressure and physical work demands and inversely associated with social acceptance at workplace, work satisfaction and the ability not to become immersed into work. Under comparable working conditions these associations did not differ for men and women. It was concluded that psychosocial demands and resources of the workplace do affect the quality of sleep.