Abstract

Bacground: Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was first identified among veterans of World War II with a prevalence of 10-67. It is a disorder caused by the exposure to a traumatic event and characterized by a persistent reexperiencing of the event, persistent avoidance of trauma associated stimuli. Method and materials: We enrolled the patients whom the diagnoses were confirmed as PTSD according to the Structured Clinical Intrview for DSM-IV (SCID) (American Psychiatric Association 1994) criteria considering non-sleep PTSD symptoms. Results :All PTSD patients were male. Mean age (SD) of PTSD patients and control group were 41.36 (5.5) and 40.9 (6.2) years respectively (P>0.05). Table 1 shows the distribution of PTSD patients according to groups of age, education, severity of injury, number of injuries, and years served in war and also their corresponding PSQI scores. Mean PSQI score was not significantly different within mentioned groups (P>0.05). Global PSQ1 score was 4.94 (2.52) and 11.60 (4.21) in control group and PTSD group respectively (P<0.001). All 7 components of Subjective sleep quality, sleep latency, sleep duration, habitual sleep efficiency, sleep disturbances, sleep medication and daytime functioning were significantly higher in PTSD group comparing control. Discussion: According to our findings, poor quality of sleep is an issue that should be considered in PTSD veterans with more intention. Many of these veterans may benefit from pharmacotherapy. However, different treatment modalities should be studied more. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.