Abstract
This review will give an update on recent studies on stress, childhood adversity, and sleep disturbances in severe mental disorders. Relevant studies were identified via Medline (PubMed) and PsycINFO databases published up to and including December 2021. The review will move on to discuss sleep disturbances in bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, and major depressive disorders to cover recent studies on childhood adversity and sleep disturbances in individuals with such disorders. As presented in this review, no patterns of sleep and circadian alterations can clearly distinguish between bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, and major depressive disorders. However, although these alterations seem to vanish in recurrent major depressive disorders when euthymia is reached, they persist in patients with remitted bipolar disorder and may exist with a higher magnitude in patients with schizophrenia. Furthermore, this review contributes to a new understanding of the negative consequences of early life stress, as well as setting childhood adversity in a biological context discussing long-term changes in sleep patterns in severe mental disorders. We propose that childhood adversity and sleep disturbances may interplay to increase the relative risk of mental disorders via long-term changes in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, circadian system, anxiety traits, substance use, as well as interacting with genetic factors. Lastly, clinical implications are discussed highlighting the issue of childhood adversity and sleep disturbances in severe mental disorder and subsequently providing additional treatment aiming to alleviate these problems.
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Abbreviations
- BD:
-
Bipolar disorder
- DMLO:
-
Dim light melatonin onset
- HPA:
-
Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis
- MDD:
-
Major depressive disorder
- PSQI:
-
Pittsburg-Scale Quality Index
- REM:
-
Rapid eye movement
- SMI:
-
Severe mental disorders
- SZ:
-
Schizophrenia
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Aas, M., Hennion, V., Birkenæs, V., Alameda, L., Etain, B. (2023). Childhood Trauma and Consequential Impact on Sleep. In: Martin, C., Preedy, V.R., Patel, V.B. (eds) Handbook of Anger, Aggression, and Violence. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98711-4_83-1
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