Sleep Problems in White-Collar Male Workers in an Electric Equipment Manufacturing Company in Japan.

Abstract

In order to clarify poor sleep habits and prevalence in sleep problems (disturbances) of healthy male white-collar workers and the relationship of these to age and job type, a total of 1,161 Japanese employees of an electric equipment manufacturing company (aged 23 to 59, mean 37 years) were surveyed by means of a mailed questionnaire. The workers were asked about eleven sleep habits. They were also divided into four groups according to age and job type: 23-29 (n=226), 30-39 (n=597), 40-49 (n=225) and 50-59 (n=113); managerial (n=209), professional (n=336), technical (n=475) and clerical (n=134). In this study, the sleep problems were defined as who had at least one of the following four poor sleep habits: 1) taking more than 30 minutes to fall asleep, 2) awakening during sleep (ADS) almost every day, 3) early morning awakening (EMA) almost every day, and 4) excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) at work almost every day. Analyses showed that sleep problems were present in 26.0% of workers; the problems were most serious among workers aged 50 years and more (36.0%) which may be due to a significant increase in the prevalence rate of EMA. The results revealed that sleep problems are common in male white-collar daytime workers. The findings also suggest a need for increased attention to sleep problems in older workers and younger ones with EDS at work.

Socioeconomic Impact of Insomnia in Working Populations

“…Nakata et al 50) found no significant differences in sleep problems amoung job categories, except for sleep insufficiency. In their study, clerical workers had a prevalence of definite insufficiency of sleep of 1.5%, whereas the prevalence was between 7.2% to 8.7% in other groups of workers (managerial, technical).…”

“…There are few studies about the prevalence of insomnia at the workplace [44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56] . Several occupational factors may have an impact on sleep: the work schedules, the physical environment at work (noise, heat, light) 54) and the occupational stresses (mental load, working organisation, stress) 57) , however it is difficult to evaluate the weight of working conditions in the appearance and in the development of sleep disturbances, more especially as it is well admitted that the natural history of insomnia depends on predisposing factors and of precipitating factors 58) .…”

“…Shift work and night work are probably the most significantly severe precipitating factors of insomnia at the workplace 53,[59][60][61][62][63] . In the daytime working population, the overall prevalence of insomnia varies between 16% to 30% [46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54] . Most of the studies focused on the prevalence of subtypes of insomnia such as Difficulties Initiating Sleep (DIS), Difficulties of Maintaining Sleep (DMS), and Early Morning Awakening (EMA).…”

Job stress and poor sleep quality: Data from an American sample of full-time workers

“…Sleep problems have been linked to a variety of physical and mental health-related outcomes (Nakata et al, 2000;NHLBIWG, 1999;Edell-Gustafsson, Kritz, & Bogren, 2002). A recent meta-analysis demonstrated relationships between sleep problems and the risk of myocardial infarction as well as coronary heart disease, concluding that the magnitude of these associations rival those of more conventional risk factors (Schwartz, Anderson, Cole, Cornoni-Huntley, Hayes, & Blazer, 1999).…”

“…Numerous studies have been conducted in Japan (Doi, 2005;Doi et al, 1999;Nakata et al, 2004;Nakata et al, 2000;Ota et al, 2005;Sekine et al, 2006;Utsugi et al, 2005), Finland (Urponen, Vuori, Hasan, & Partinen, 1988), Sweden (Linton, 2004), Germany (Frese & Harwich, 1984), Belgium (Pelfrene et al, 2002), and France (Ribet & Derrienic, 1999). There may be international differences in the significance and magnitude of associations due to variations in cultural contexts.…”