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Hughes presents research on sleep disturbances in veterans

Jaime Hughes, rising third-year doctoral student, presented her ongoing research on sleep disturbance in returning Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts at the 29th Annual Meeting of the Association of Professional Sleep Societies held in Seattle in June. Hughes’ work was also selected for an invited presentation at the Veterans Affairs Sleep Providers Meeting and was featured in a press release by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

Hughes notes that approximately two-thirds of returning veterans complain of sleep problems yet the long-term impacts of unresolved, chronic sleep disturbance are unknown. There has been growing interest in the role of sleep on an individual’s resilience and adaptive capacities, yet there remains little consensus around the very definition of resilience.  The current study found that resilience scores were negatively associated with sleep quality and a range of other sleep characteristics. Additional research is needed to better understand how resilience and its individual constructs relate to sleep behaviors and sleep quality. The full text of the press release can be found here.