Community Violence Concerns and Adolescent Sleep

• In Event: 3-085 - Sleep in the Context of Risk and Adversity: A Lifespan Perspective

Integrative Statement

The majority of adolescents ages 14-17 report witnessing violence in their lifetime (71.5%; National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence, 2015). Exposure to such violence may elicit concerns for safety that elevate arousal levels, which can make it difficult to initiate and maintain sleep. Previous work has found that greater concerns about community violence are associated with poor objective and subjective sleep quality (Bagley et al., 2016). However, the effects of community violence concerns on sleep may not be uniform. For example, there are individual differences in the ability to regulate physiological arousal that are linked to quality of sleep (El-Sheikh & Buckhalt, 2005). Furthermore, in comparison to White/European American (EA) adolescents, Black/African American (AA) adolescents are at greater risk for poor sleep (Moore et al., 2012). The present study sought to address the novel question of whether physiological regulation and race may conjointly protect against or exacerbate risk for poor sleep in the context of greater community violence concerns.
Adolescents (N = 219; 55% girls) participated when they were 17 years old. The sample was 70% EA, 30% AA, and socioeconomically diverse. Adolescents reported on community violence concerns (e.g., "How worried are you that someone will break into your home?") using the well-validated Community Experiences Questionnaire (Schwartz & Proctor, 2000). Physiological regulation was indexed via respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), a measure of parasympathetic activity, both at rest and in response to an emotionally and cognitively challenging task. Higher baseline RSA corresponds with flexible responding to environmental stress, and a greater decrease in RSA in response to challenge may allow for mobilization of sympathetic resources that underlie adaptive cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to stress (Porges, 2007). Consistent with best practices (Sadeh, 2015), multiple sleep parameters were examined. Adolescents wore actigraphs (Ambulatory Monitoring, Inc.) for 7 nights to objectively assess their sleep duration and quality, and completed the well-established School Sleep Habits Survey (Wolfson & Carskadon, 1998) to measure their daytime sleepiness. Adolescent gender and family socioeconomic status were statistically controlled in analyses.
Results demonstrated a robust and consistent pattern of three-way interactions between community violence concerns, baseline RSA, and race predicting sleep, ps < .05 (Figure 1). In the context of greater violence concerns, AA adolescents with lower baseline RSA had shorter and poorer quality sleep as well as greater sleepiness. Similarly, three-way interactions with change in RSA in response to the task showed that in the context of greater violence concerns, AA adolescents who decreased RSA less from baseline to the task had shorter and poorer quality sleep, ps < .05 (Figure 2).
AA adolescents experience race-based stressors (e.g., discrimination) that increase vulnerability to poor sleep and health disparities (Levy et al., 2016). The novel findings from the present study suggest that in the context of greater community violence concerns, race-based stress may contribute additional risk that increases AA adolescents' vulnerability to poor sleep when combined with difficulty regulating physiological arousal. Psychoeducation targeting sleep hygiene and coping strategies may be beneficial for improving sleep especially for these adolescents.

Authors

• Lauren Philbrook, Colgate University
  Presenting Author

• Mona El-Sheikh, Auburn University
  Non-Presenting Author