RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) have a high prevalence of risk factors for sleep apnea, but these risk factors often go unrecognized, partly due to the overlap among sleep apnea, somatic conditions, and symptoms (e.g., obesity, daytime sleepiness), leading to potential under-recognition of sleep apnea in a high-risk population. OBJECTIVE: The objective of our study was to compare sleep apnea prevalence and clinical features among Veterans with and without SMI. METHOD: Data for the current analyses were drawn from an administrative dataset of 33,818 United States Military Veterans with a primary care visit in calendar year 2007. The medical record data included demographic characteristics, and medical, psychiatric, and sleep diagnoses. RESULTS: Veterans with SMI had a significantly higher prevalence of sleep apnea than those without SMI. Younger Veterans with SMI had a higher prevalence of sleep apnea relative to older Veterans with SMI and Veterans with SMI and sleep apnea had a greater number of medical comorbidities than Veterans with SMI and no sleep apnea. CONCLUSION: In a large sample of Veterans, those with SMI were at greater risk of having comorbid sleep apnea. Furthermore, Veterans with comorbid SMI and sleep apnea were at greater risk for increased rates of comorbid medical disorders. Sleep apnea appears to be a key risk factor for increased morbidity in Veterans with an SMI diagnosis, highlighting the importance of treating sleep apnea in a challenging patient population.
Assuntos
Transtornos Mentais/epidemiologia , Síndromes da Apneia do Sono/epidemiologia , Veteranos/psicologia , Veteranos/estatística & dados numéricos , Adolescente , Adulto , Idoso , Idoso de 80 Anos ou mais , Comorbidade , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Transtornos Mentais/psicologia , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Prevalência , Fatores de Risco , Síndromes da Apneia do Sono/psicologia , Estados Unidos/epidemiologia , Adulto JovemRESUMO
Daytime and nighttime symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are common among combat veterans and military service members. However, there is a great deal of heterogeneity in how symptoms are expressed. Clarifying the heterogeneity of daytime and nighttime PTSD symptoms through exploratory clustering may generate hypotheses regarding ways to optimally match evidence-based treatments to PTSD symptom profiles. We used mixture modeling to reveal clusters based on six daytime and nighttime symptoms of 154 combat veterans with insomnia and varying levels of PTSD symptoms. Three clusters with increasing symptom severity were identified (N1=50, N2=70, N3=34). These results suggest that, among veterans with insomnia, PTSD symptoms tend to exist on a continuum of severity, rather than as a categorical PTSD diagnosis. Hypotheses regarding possible targeted treatment strategies for veterans within each identified cluster, as well as ways to generalize these methods to other groups within the military, are discussed.