A study finds that soldiers who have insomnia before deployment may be more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than service members who don’t struggle to sleep before they deploy, reports Reuters.
For the study, researchers surveyed U.S. Army soldiers one to two months before they deployed to Afghanistan in 2012, right after they returned from deployment, and again three months and nine months later.
Overall, 21 percent of the soldiers had experienced insomnia at some point prior to deployment and 15 percent had insomnia within the 30 days before deployment.
Soldiers who experienced insomnia in the 30 days prior to deployment were more than three times more likely to experience PTSD and more than twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts after their return than peers who didn’t have sleep difficulties at the start of the study.
