Sleep Mediates Effects of Neighborhood Safety on Anxiety
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Date
2021-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
Anxiety disorders affect 20% of children and adolescents. Increased anxiety during childhood portends risk for poor sleep, fatigue and irritability in early life as well as anxiety and depression during adulthood. Environmental factors, such as neighborhood safety, influence children's susceptibility to developing anxiety. Specifically, exposure to neighborhood instability, including violent crime, drug use, and other illegal activities, is associated with increased risk for anxiety among young children, particularly those belonging to lower income families. However, little is known about mechanisms underlying this association.Given known links between 1) anxiety and sleep disturbance and 2) neighborhood characteristics (e.g., noise, crime rate) and sleep disturbance, this study will examine sleep disturbance as a mediator between neighborhood safety and anxiety in young children. We hypothesize that neighborhood safety and anxiety will be inversely associated and that this association will be mediated by sleep disturbance. This is fulfilling a gap in the literature surrounding a mediation model of these effects with a powerful and nationally representative sample. This study will use data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study (ABCD), an ongoing longitudinal study of child development in the U.S. Data from baseline (n = 11,878) and one-year follow-up visits will be used. Children were ages 8-10 at baseline and the sample was representative of the national population of U.S children. Neighborhood safety was measured via parent reports and crime reports collected from participants' neighborhoods. Sleep disturbance was measured via parent report (Sleep Disturbance Scale for Children), as was anxiety (Child Behavior Checklist; DSM-oriented anxiety scale). Mean scores for anxiety, as measured by the CBCL DSM-5 Anxiety scale, were 53.49 (n = 11,870, SD = 6.13, range = 50-97) at baseline and 53.52 (n = 11,191, SD = 6.21, range = 50-97) at one-year follow-up. Mean scores for sleep, as measured by the SDSC, were 36.51 (n=11,772, SD= 8.25, range= 0-126) at baseline and 36.56 (n= 11,147, SD= 8.26, range= 0-115). This study is intended to provide a recommendation for sleep as an accessible intervention for childhood anxiety with emphasis on neighborhoods with added environmental stressors.
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Keywords
Neighborhood Characteristics, Anxiety, Sleep disturbance, Childhood anxiety, Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study