Source: Reuters
A survey from the United States and Canada found 40 per cent of police officers had symptoms of a sleep disorder, including sleep apnoea and insomnia.
Officers who screened positive for those disorders were also more likely to be burnt out, depressed or have an anxiety disorder. Over the next two years, they committed more administrative errors and safety violations and were more prone to falling asleep at the wheel than sound sleepers.
“In general, we have this cultural attitude of ‘sleep is for the weak’,” said Dr Michael Grandner, from the Centre for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
“When you’re in an environment where signs of weakness are particularly discouraged, there may be a social pressure to not address sleep problems or to shrug them off,” added Grandner, author of a commentary published with the new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
When police officers in particular suffer from sleep problems, he said, it becomes a public health and safety problem. “It’s not just the people with sleep disorders that are affected,” Grandner told Reuters Health. “If they’re impaired, you’re at risk.”
Researchers say police departments could do more to make sure that officers with sleep disorders receive appropriate treatment, which may include sleep machines, therapy or changes in work schedules.
For the new study, close to 5,000 police officers were surveyed on sleep problems and other health topics. That included Philadelphia officers and Massachusetts state police as well as a broader range of other US and Canadian law enforcers.
The officers were on average 38 to 39 years old and most had been in the police force for more than a decade.
Dr Charles Czeisler from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and his colleagues found that 40 per cent of the officers screened positive for at least one sleep disorder.
The most common was sleep apnoea, which affected a third of officers, followed by moderate or severe insomnia and shift work disorder, which consists of sleepiness and insomnia associated with working at night.
Officers with a sleep disorder were more than twice as likely as healthy sleepers to report depression, emotional exhaustion or burnout and anxiety disorders on their original surveys.
On follow-up questionnaires sent out over the next two years, they were also 40 to 60 per cent more likely to report making serious administrative errors, falling asleep while driving or committing a fatigue-related error or safety violation during work.
Poor sleepers reported more citizen complaints and more often showed uncontrolled anger towards a suspect or citizen.
The researchers noted that being heavy increases the risk of sleep apnoea, and that almost 80 per cent of the officers they surveyed were overweight or obese.
Czeisler said the lowest rates of both sleep apnoea and overweight and obese conditions were in Massachusetts state police, and that this is no coincidence.
Those officers get one hour paid exercise time for every work shift, he told Reuters Health, and undergo regular fitness tests that simulate chasing a suspect or dragging a victim, with a bonus in pay if they pass.
“It’s an impressive programme and perhaps a model for the nation,” Czeisler said.
