Dados do Trabalho

Título

Emotional disorders and poor sleep quality among night workers

Introdução

The conflict between social and biological clocks experienced by night shift workers has been associated with the occurrence of emotional disorders. These disorders, in turn, can aggravate poor sleep quality.

Objetivo

To evaluate the relationship between mild emotional disorders and the self-reported sleep quality among overweight night shift workers.

Métodos

We performed a double-blind randomized clinical crossover trial. The present study used only data extracted from the baseline, performed with 43 overweight nursing professionals who worked permanent night shifts. Self-reported mild emotional disorders (mild depression, tension and anxiety) were taken from the Work Ability Index and self-reported sleep quality was taken from a single question of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index.

Resultados

The mean age of participants was 39.8 years (SD=6.3 years), most were nursing technicians (51.2%), married (65.1%), with mean hospital working time of 8.3 years (SD=4.5 years) and night shift of 5.6 years (SD=3.8 years). A total of 25.6% of participants reported mild emotional disorders and 44.2% perceived their sleep quality as poor or very poor. It was verified that a higher proportion of those who reported no mild emotional disorders had good sleep quality (59.4%) compared to those who had poor sleep quality (6.3%). Among those who reported mild emotional disorders, a higher proportion of poor sleep quality (36.4%) was observed compared to those with good sleep quality (27.3%).

Conclusões

Mild emotional disturbances were proportionally higher among the participants with poor sleep quality. It’s noteworthy that night work can be determinant in this binomial between the presence of emotional disorders and the poor sleep quality, signalizing that preventive measures and strategies are required in order to improve emotional health and sleep patterns among these workers.

Palavras-chave

Emotional disorders; Sleep quality; Nursing.