Who Reports Insomnia? Relationships with Age, Sex, Ethnicity, and Socioeconomic Deprivation

Abstract

STUDY OBJECTIVES: To investigate the prevalence of self-reported insomnia symptoms among Mâori (indigenous people) and non-Mâori adults in the general population of New Zealand. To explore the possible links between insomnia symptoms and ethnicity, gender, age, employment status and socio-economic deprivation. DESIGN: Mail-out survey to a stratified random sample of 4,000 people aged 20 to 59 years, selected from the electoral roll. SETTING: Nationwide survey of New Zealand adults (72.5% response rate). PARTICIPANTS: The sample design aimed for equal numbers of Mâori and non-Mâori participants, men and women, and participants in each decade of age. INTERVENTIONS: N/A. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS: Population prevalence estimates indicated that self-reported insomnia symptoms and sleeping problems were higher among Mâori than non-Mâori. Multiple logistic regression analyses identified unemployment and socioeconomic deprivation as being strongly associated to all insomnia symptoms and to reporting a sleeping problem lasting more than 6 months. CONCLUSIONS: Socioeconomic factors and ethnicity are significant independent predictors of reported insomnia symptoms. This finding has important implications for the provision of treatment services to those most in need.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 112 citations exist upstream.