Abstract
Objectives
Numerous health disparities are documented in deaf population research, but few empirical
sleep assessments exist for this under-served population, despite knowledge that sleep
contributes to physical and mental health disparities. We sought to document subjective
and objective sleep in deaf adults with cross-sectional and prospective measures.
Methods
Twenty deaf participants completed validated sleep and mental health questionnaires,
2-weeks of nightly sleep diaries and continuous wrist-worn actigraphy monitoring,
and 1-week of nightly, reduced-montage EEG recordings.
Results
Questionnaire data suggest high prevalence of insomnia (70%), poor sleep (75%), daytime
sleepiness (25%) and nightmares (20%) among participants. Strong correlations were
found between depression and sleep quality, fear of sleep, and insomnia severity (p’s < .005). Objective sleep assessments suggest elevated wake after sleep onset and
low sleep efficiency and sleep duration.
Conclusions
The prevalence of sleep disturbance recorded from self-report and objective sleep
measures provides preliminary evidence of sleep health disparity among deaf adults.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: December 07, 2022
Accepted:
October 27,
2022
Received in revised form:
October 5,
2022
Received:
June 27,
2022
Identification
Copyright
© 2022 National Sleep Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
