Connection Between Sleep and Psychological Well-Being in U.S. Army Soldiers

• Published in: Military Medicine
• Main Authors: Holmes, Kristen E, Fox, Nadia, King, Jemma, Presby, David M, Kim, Jeongeun
• Other Authors: U.S. Army
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford University Press (OUP) 2023
• Subjects: Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health; General Medicine; Arctic; Anchorage; Queensland; Brisbane
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/milmed/usad187; https://academic.oup.com/milmed/article-pdf/189/1-2/e40/56448520/usad187.pdf

ABSTRACT Introduction The goal of this exploratory study was to examine the relationships between sleep consistency and workplace resilience among soldiers stationed in a challenging Arctic environment. Materials and Methods A total of 862 soldiers (67 females) on an Army base in Anchorage, AK, were provided WHOOP 3.0, a validated sleep biometric capture device and were surveyed at onboarding and at the conclusion of the study. Soldiers joined the study from early January to early March 2021 and completed the study in July 2021 (650 soldiers completed the onboarding survey and 210 completed the exit survey, with 151 soldiers completing both). Three comparative analyses were conducted. First, soldiers’ sleep and cardiac metrics were compared against the general WHOOP population and a WHOOP sample living in AK. Second, seasonal trends (summer versus winter) in soldiers’ sleep metrics (time in bed, hours of sleep, wake duration during sleep, time of sleep onset/offset, and disturbances) were analyzed, and these seasonal trends were compared with the general WHOOP population and the WHOOP sample living in AK. Third, soldiers’ exertion, sleep duration, and sleep consistency were correlated with their self-reported psychological functioning. All analyses were conducted with parametric and non-parametric statistics. This study was approved by The University of Queensland Human Research Ethics Committee (Brisbane, Australia) Institutional Review Board. Results Because of the exploratory nature of the study, the critical significance value was set at P < .001. Results revealed that: (1) Arctic soldiers had poorer sleep consistency and sleep duration than the general WHOOP sample and the Alaskan WHOOP sample, (2) Arctic soldiers showed a decrease in sleep consistency and sleep duration in the summer compared to that in the winter, (3) Arctic soldiers were less able to control their bedroom environment in the summer than in the winter, and (4) sleep consistency but not sleep duration correlated positively with ...