Trouble sleeping and anxiety/depression in childhood

The purpose of this report was to estimate the association between children 's trouble sleeping and anxiety/depression at ages 6 and 11, cross-sectiona lly and prospectively. Data come from a study of the psychiatric sequelae o f low birth weight (LBW: < 2500 g). LBW and normal birth weight children we re randomly selected from the 1983-1985 newborn lists of an urban and a sub urban hospital. Eight hundred and twenty-three children participated at age 6 and, of those, 717 (87.1%) participated at age 11. Achenbach's Child Beh avior Checklist (CBCL) and the Teacher Report Form (TRF) were used to obtai n ratings of psychiatric problems. The CBCL asked if the child had trouble sleeping during the past 6 months. Children with trouble sleeping had signi ficantly increased odds of anxiety/depression based on mothers' reports (OR = 6.9, 95% CI 4.1-11.4) but not teachers' reports (OR = 1.1, 95% CI 0.4-2. 7). There was a greater association between sleep and depression at age 11 than at age 6, and among suburban than among urban children. These findings remained when adjusted for birthweight, sex, and mother's history of major depressive disorder. Profile analysis indicated a stronger association of trouble sleeping with anxiety/depression than other psychiatric problems. T he association of trouble sleeping at age 6 with incidence of depression at age 11 was not statistically significant (suburban children RR = 2.22, 95% CI 0.53-9.23; urban children RR = 0.92, 95% CI 0.20-4.18). (C) 2000 Elsevi er Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.