THE ESSENTIAL
- One in four children suffer from insomnia, a problem that also affects 35% of adolescents
- These sleep disorders can in more than four out of ten cases continue into adulthood.
Do not neglect the possible insomnia of your children. They may announce sleep problems that will follow them all their lives. According to a study by scientists at Penn State College of Medicine published in the journal Pediatrics, 43% of children with sleep disorders continue to suffer from them in adolescence and adulthood.
“Given that 25% of children, 35% of adolescents and 45% of young adults suffer from insomnia, we wanted to understand how these symptoms change over time as the child grows into adulthood. , explains one of the authors of this work, Professor Julio Fernandez-Mendoza, especially since entry into adulthood is a stage in life where there is an increase in the severity and prevalence of physical and mental health problems, such as cardiovascular disease and suicide rates“.
A quantitative and qualitative analysis of sleep
The study started in 2000 on children aged 5 to 12 at the time. Their possible insomnia problems were documented by their parents but the quantitative and qualitative indicators of their sleep were evaluated objectively in the laboratory.
The situation of more than 500 of these children was studied for a part of them following 7.4 years when they reached adolescence and for another part following 15 years when they arrived adulthood.
43% of insomniac children still have it in adulthood
Result, 43% of children who had sleep problems continued to suffer from adolescence to adulthood. And among the children who had no symptoms of insomnia, 15% then experienced it during the transition to adolescence with persistence until adulthood and 21% developed it when they reached adulthood.
“The main finding of this study is that childhood insomnia symptoms are much more likely than we thought to persist over time.“, remarks Professor Fernandez-Mendoza, suggesting that parents not consider children’s sleep problems as benign and to consider that “it will fade with age“.
Adult disorders may have started in childhood
In addition, the research team considers that many sleep problems in adults may in fact have started in childhood, “although sleep disturbances in adults tend to be triggered by more recent stressors.”
Although this was not the focus of their study, scientists at the Penn State College of Medicine have identified the underlying causes of the sleep problems observed in children. These causes would first be “behavioural” (when for example a child needs the presence of a parent in the room to fall asleep), psychiatric (hyperactivity, mood disorders, autism) or medical (gastrointestinal problems -intestinal).
