Examining mediators of the association between child maltreatment and sleep disturbance in college students.

BACKGROUND: Childhood maltreatment has been associated with poorer mental and physical health across the lifespan, including disrupted sleep. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to assess four potential mediators of the association between child maltreatment and sleep in a sample of college students: daily rumination, perceptions of control over stressors, sleep hygiene, and distress. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: University students (N = 234) completed self-report measures online. METHODS: Childhood maltreatment was assessed at baseline and rumination, perceived control, sleep hygiene, and distress were assessed daily for 14 days and aggregated across days. Structural equation models were used to test hypotheses. The hypothesized model was compared to an alternate path reversal model. RESULTS: Maltreatment was significantly associated with greater sleep disturbance (ß = 0.17, p < .05). Of the mediators, only sleep hygiene partially mediated the association between maltreatment and sleep (ß = 0.07, p < .01). The alternate path reversal model demonstrated that sleep disturbances mediated the relation between child maltreatment and sleep hygiene (ß = 0.11, p < .001) and perceived control (ß = 0.07, p < .05), and sleep disturbances partially mediated the relation between maltreatment and distress (ß = 0.10, p < .01) and rumination (ß = 0.09, p < .01). CONCLUSIONS: Sleep hygiene may be implicated in the long-term health effects of child maltreatment. Further, sleep hygiene interventions may be useful for improving sleep among college students who have experienced maltreatment, and targeting students' sleep may have benefits for students' cognition and mood.

Emerging adult college students' descriptions of exposure to childhood emotional abuse and associated factors: A qualitative exploration.

BACKGROUND: Growing evidence on the long-term deleterious impacts of emotional abuse highlights the need to further understand childhood emotional abuse and its context to strengthen prevention efforts. OBJECTIVE: To describe emerging adults' experiences of emotional abuse in their childhoods and the household context surrounding that abuse. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: Fifty-eight interviews were conducted with emerging adults, ages 18-25, recruited from four 2- and 4-year institutions of higher education. METHODS: Thematic analysis was conducted to identify and describe patterns in the data. A cyclical approach to codebook development and data analysis was followed by a team of four coders. RESULTS: Themes related to participants' experiences of emotional abuse included: inability to meet parent expectations; parent attacks on the child's character; parent negative comparisons to siblings and others; parent invalidation of the child's emotions and mental health needs; and evolution over time in the parent-child relationship. Aspects of childhood family environments contemporaneous with the childhood emotional abuse included: financial stress; parent mental illness; parent divorce, separation, or volatile relationship; parent adversity or trauma; physical abuse; and young parent age. Many participants identified these aspects of their family environment, most of which could potentially be improved with sufficient support, as playing causal roles in the emotional abuse they experienced. CONCLUSION: This descriptive qualitative study provides additional insight into child emotional abuse and its associated factors, providing invaluable insights that can enhance current measurement and intervention approaches.

Relations among daily stressors, childhood maltreatment, and sleep in college students.

This study aimed to assess (a) the within- and between-person associations between daily stress and sleep; (b) the relation between childhood maltreatment and sleep; and (c) whether the relation between stress and sleep was moderated by the extent of childhood maltreatment among college students. Participants (N = 181) comprised the active control group in a previous intervention study. Participants completed a self-report measure of childhood maltreatment and 14 daily self-report measures of stressor exposure and severity (evenings) and 6 sleep measures (e.g., quality, duration; mornings). Experiencing more daily stressors than usual (within-person relation) was significantly associated with delayed sleep latency (i.e., time falling asleep). Greater daily stressor severity was also significantly associated with lower sleep efficiency within persons. Participants who reported more stressors in general had shorter sleep duration, poorer sleep quality, and less restful sleep (between-person relations). Students who reported more childhood maltreatment also reported significantly lower quality sleep and feeling less rested upon awakening. Childhood maltreatment did not moderate the within-person association between daily stress and sleep. Unexpectedly, at the between-person level, maltreatment moderated the association between stressors and stressor severity and several sleep parameters (e.g., efficiency and latency) such that there was a weaker relation between stress and sleep among those with more maltreatment. Interventions on campus could aim to reduce stress and improve sleep. Additional awareness of the prevalence of maltreatment and how it may be related to sleep also appears warranted. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).