Parental rearing attitudes in childhood is associated with adult sleep disturbances independently from depression and life events: a cross-sectional survey in Japan

Sleep disturbance associated with depression and suicide is a serious public health concern. Previous studies have suggested that sleep disturbances increase the risk of suicide without going through depression. Adverse childhood experience, which has a long-term effect on mental health, is also a serious problem. We conducted a study to investigate the association between parental rearing attitudes in childhood and sleep disturbances in adulthood by performing a questionnaire survey. A cross-sectional survey performed with the residents of a provincial city in Japan. A total of 1,500 male (aged ≧ 30 years) subjects were randomly selected by a computer from the basic resident register after stratifying them by age. The subjects were assessed by personal characteristics, the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS), and the Parent Bonding Instrument (PBI). We obtained an answer from 400 people (26.7%) among 1,500 subjects. Their average age and standard deviation were 48.3±8.6 years at the time of the survey. According to performing a logistic regression analysis that assessed each parental bonding type compared with optimal bonding adjusted for CES-D and SRRS, “affectionless control” and “awaking during sleep,” and “affectionate constraint” and “a sense of insufficiency of the sleep” were significantly associated, even after controlling for age (OR 2.93, 95% CI: 1.46-5.87; OR 0.24, 95% CI: 0.07-0.79, respectively). Our study raises the possibility that the parental care of a child affects sleep disturbances in adulthood