Social Ties May Play a Critical Role in Mitigating Sleep Difficulties in Disaster-Affected Communities: A Cross-Sectional Study in the Ishinomaki Area, Japan

Abstract

Our data suggest that the lack of pleasure in life and relatively strong networks in the neighborhood, which are potentially modifiable, might have stronger associations with sleep difficulties than do nonmodifiable or hardly modifiable consequences of the disaster (e.g., house damage, change in family structure, and change in work status).

Higher Incidence of Sleep Disturbance among Survivors with Musculoskeletal Pain after the Great East Japan Earthquake: A Prospective Study

“…The relationship between pain and sleep disturbance is considered to be quite complex (Smith and Haythornthwaite 2004). The survivors of the GEJE suffer from various physical, mental, and socioeconomic problems that are probably related to pain and sleep disturbance (Matsumoto et al 2014;Tomata et al 2015;Sone et al 2016;Watanabe et al 2016). Musculoskeletal pain was associated with new-onset sleep disturbance in such a complicated situation.…”

“…Reducing sleep disturbance is an important issue after natural disasters. Improving living environments and building communities with neighbors are considered as possible ways to decrease sleep disturbance of survivors (Matsumoto et al 2014;Kawano et al 2016). Further, care for musculoskeletal pain is also important, and former studies have suggested that creating environments to avoid immobility and support for economic anxiety can decrease that pain (Yabuki et al 2015;Yabe et al 2017), which may prevent sleep disturbance in the survivors of the natural disasters.…”

“…Although six years have passed, 119,000 survivors have still had to evacuate from their hometowns because of their dwelling environments and accidents of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (Hagiwara et al 2017a). Various factors related to the earthquake, such as life-threatening stress, unhealthy conditions, social isolation, uncertainty over the future, and dwelling environments, have been reported to relate to the onset or worsening of some diseases (Matsumoto et al 2014;Yabuki et al 2015;Sone et al 2016;Yabe et al 2017). Sleep disturbance and musculoskeletal pain are particularly common symptoms after natural disasters (Yabuki et al 2015;Kawano et al 2016).…”

“…Several factors such as age, sex, psychological factors, and socioeconomic factors (including income and employment) are considered to be associated with sleep disturbance (Morin et al 2009;Matsumoto et al 2014). Furthermore, some pain has also been related to sleep disturbance (Ashburn and Staats 1999;Doufas et al 2012).…”

“…In the acute phase of natural disasters, sleep disturbance occurs frequently and mainly as a stress reaction (Kawano et al 2016). Matsumoto et al (2014) reported that sleep disturbance was also common among the survivors in the 6-12 months following the GEJE and associated with socioeconomic factors. Although the prevalence of musculoskeletal pain increases after natural disasters (Angeletti et al 2014;Yabuki et al 2015) and careful attention has been paid to psychological and socioeconomic factors, there are no reports examining the influence of musculoskeletal pain on sleep disturbance after natural disasters.…”