Childhood adversity linked to sleep problems in older adults
Adults with at least three childhood adversities had 2.1 times the adjusted odds of sleep disturbances compared with those with none.
Psychological Medicine
An observational cohort study examined 5,533 adults aged 45 or older in the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. The researchers analysed 2014 baseline data. They grouped participants by whether they had experienced no, one, two or at least three childhood adversities. They defined sleep disturbances as poor self-reported sleep quality combined with sleeping less than six or more than nine hours.
The researchers accounted for age, sex, education, marital status, smoking, drinking and chronic diseases. Compared with adults with no childhood adversity, those with one experience had 1.30 times the odds of sleep disturbances. For those with at least three experiences, the figure was 2.1. Household mental illness showed the strongest association among the adversity types examined.
Why it matters
The authors suggested that older adults with substantial childhood adversity may benefit from targeted screening and early intervention for sleep disturbances.
Caveats
This observational study cannot show cause and effect. Sleep disturbances were defined partly by a self-reported sleep-quality question, and many participants were excluded because of missing data.
- Childhood exposure to household mental illness
- Adverse childhood experiences
- Chronic sleep disturbances
- CES-D-10 self-reported sleep quality item
- Sleep duration
- Humans
The paper
The Eighth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University · Shenzhen People's Hospital
Psychological Medicine · 7 Oct 2026
