0793 A Comparison Of Children’s Sleep Characteristics From A Community Sample And From Child Protection Services For Child Neglect.

Abstract

Introduction: Child neglect is associated with many factors that are likely to adversely affect children's sleep quality. However, almost no studies compared sleep of children who have been exposed to this type of maltreatment to those who haven't. The aim of this study was to compare sleep of children growing up in a neglect context to sleep of children coming from a similar socio-economic background but not exposed to parental neglect. Methods: Items derived from the Child's sleep habits questionnaire (CSHQ) were assessed in two cohorts of mothers of children aged 2 to 79 months, attending either an intervention group for child neglect (n=52) or activities offered by community services (n=92). A repeated measures ANCOVA was computed to assess the differences in the children's sleep reported by both group of mothers. The child's sleep variables used were total sleep time (TST), bedtime struggles (BS), nocturnal awakenings (NA), excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) and the capacity to fall asleep by himself (FAH). Age was included as a covariate because of its close relationship with sleep. Results: A significant Group X Sleep variables interaction was found [F (2.41,564)=19.69, p=.002], showing that the sleep variables were varying differently according to groups. Single comparison follow-up analysis using independent t-tests specified that mothers of children in the neglect group report higher TST than the mothers in the community group (10h48±1h37 vs 10h02±1h32 respectively; t(142)=-2.82, p=.005). On the other hand, mothers from the neglect group also indicate more EDS than the mothers in the community group (1.57±.82 vs 1.25 ±.53; t(77.13) = -2.52, p=.014). No other difference was found. Conclusion: Knowing that, in a child neglect population, parents tend to report higher level of daytime sleepiness even though they also report longer sleep duration in their child, future research should attempt to objectively evaluate children's sleep quality in this population.