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REASONS WHY LONELINESS DISRUPTS SLEEP | |
| Contact: William Harms Phone: 773-702-8356 Email: w-harms@uchicago.edu Embargoed until: March 3, 2004 |
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Vancouver, BC, Canada - Researchers have established that elderly individuals, like young adults, frequently report poor sleep if they also report being lonely. But what causes this to happen? New research at the University of Chicago shows that underlying reasons for poor sleep among lonely, older people include feelings of depression and stress. The research established that the greater the degree of reported depressive or stressed feelings, the poorer the sleep quality. Feelings of stress turned out to be responsible for the poor sleep quality reported by lonely individuals. Ineffective sleep results in lonely individuals experiencing problems functioning during work and other daily activities, the study found. Problems with daily functioning arose from two sources: stressed feelings and loneliness. These effects were additive, indicating that loneliness is an independent risk factor for sleep-related daily dysfunction. The study is reported in "Sleep Quality as a Function of Psychosocial Risk Factors in a Population-based Sample of Older Adults: Loneliness as a Proximal and Distal Predictor," a poster presentation by Louise Hawkley of the University of Chicago at the Annual Conference of the American Psychosomatic Society, held March 2-5, 2005, in Vancouver, British Columbia. Hawkley, a Senior Research Scientist with the University's Chicago Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, and John Cacioppo, the Tiffany & Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology, at the University, conducted the study on a sample of 229 ethnically diverse people between the ages of 50 through 68. | |
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Psychosomatic Medicine is the official peer-reviewed journal of the American Psychosomatic Society, published bimonthly. For information about the journal, contact Vicki White, Managing Editor for Manuscript Production,
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