INSOMNIA IN AN 80-YEAR-OLD POPULATION - RELATIONSHIP TO MEDICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL-FACTORS

In this study, insomnia in 80-year-olds was related to medical, psycho logical and social factors. The data were based on examinations every year in people aged between 80 and 89 years. Of 333 people living in t he city of Lund and born in 1908, 67% participated. Increased severity of insomnia was significantly associated with use of diuretics, other cardiovascular drugs, hypnotics and laxatives, and with nervousness, difficulty relaxing, anorexia, nausea, constipation, backache, feeling cold, sweating, loss of weight, dizziness, depression, general fatigu e, exhaustion, angina pectoris, cardiac insufficiency, worsened object ive and subjective health, presence of negative T-waves on EGG, anxiet y, total life satisfaction, neuroticism, disbelief in a just world, fe eling lonely and lower survival rates. Thus insomnia has widespread as sociations with different aspects of life in 80-year-olds.