Sexual abuse

Injury prevention

Biology

Suicide prevention

Human factors and ergonomics

Sleep disorder

Child abuse

Cognition

Psychiatry

Developmental psychology

Medical emergency

Occupational safety and health

Environmental health

Paleontology

Physical abuse

Poison control

CTQ tree

Psychology

Sleep quality

Insomnia

Neglect

Cross-sectional study

Domestic violence

Medicine

Clinical psychology

Psychological abuse

Disturbance (geology)

Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index

Pathology

Journal of Affective Disorders

To explore the association between different types of childhood maltreatment and sleep disturbance among Chinese adolescents, with a particular focus on gender differences. A cross-sectional study was conducted in 7 randomly selected provinces of China via the 2015 School-Based Chinese Adolescents Health Survey. Questionnaires from 153,547 students were completed and were eligible for this study. The Chinese Version of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (CPSQI) and Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF) were used to assess sleep disturbance and childhood maltreatment, respectively. The prevalence of sleep disturbance among adolescents in China was 21.6%. A significantly increased risk of sleep disturbance was associated with physical abuse (aOR=1.22, 95% CI=1.21–1.24), emotional abuse (aOR=1.15, 95% CI=1.14–1.15), sexual abuse (aOR=1.16, 95% CI=1.15–1.18), physical neglect (aOR=1.04, 95% CI=1.03–1.05), and emotional neglect (aOR=1.03, 95% CI=1.02–1.03). A significant dose-response relationship was found between cumulative childhood maltreatment experiences and sleep disturbance. The interaction terms (between physical abuse/emotional abuse/sexual abuse/physical neglect/emotional neglect/number of childhood traumas and gender) were significantly associated with sleep disturbance. Further stratification analyses by gender showed that girls who reported experiencing one or more of these five types of childhood maltreatment had a higher risk of sleep disturbance than boys. The study only included school students, and the cross-sectional design limited our ability to make causal inferences. The study findings suggest that childhood maltreatment increases the risk of sleep disturbance in adolescents. Furthermore, exposure to single and multiple types of childhood maltreatment predicts lower sleep quality in girls.

Gender differences in the associations between types of childhood maltreatment and sleep disturbance among Chinese adolescents