Health of Canadian Firefighters: The Impact of Sleep and Work

Date
2021-12-16
Authors
Cramm, Heidi
Richmond, Rachel
Jamshidi, Laleh
Edgelow, Megan
Groll, Dianne
Ricciardelli, Rosemary
MacDermid, Joy, C.
Keiley, Michael
Carleton, R. Nicholas
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute,
Abstract

Volunteer and career firefighters are at risk of major depressive disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), alcohol use disorder, and other mental health disorders due to the demanding and unpredictable nature of their employment. The mental health risks are exacerbated by the need to work extended hours, night shifts, and/or rotating schedules, or the competing demands of other employment, especially in volunteer firefighters. The mental health disorders and risk factors interact with altered sleeping patterns. In the current study, we examined volunteer and career firefighters regarding the association between mental health and sleep, drawing from a national Canadian mental health survey of 1217 firefighters. Most (69%) of the firefighters reported less than ideal sleep quality and 21% screened positive for clinical insomnia, with no significant difference between volunteer and career subgroups. Firefighters with insomnia had higher odds ratios (OR) and frequencies for PTSD (OR = 4.98), generalized anxiety disorder (OR = 7.15), panic disorder (OR = 6.88), social phobia (OR = 4.98), and major depressive disorder (OR = 7.91), than firefighters without insomnia. The burden of sleep disorders and their association with mental health disorders suggests that sleep should be considered in health monitoring and self-management, environmental design, fire service work-organization policies, and health programming.

Description
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).
Keywords
insomnia, shift worker, mental health, public safety personnel
Citation
Cramm, H., Richmond, R., Jamshidi, L., Edgelow, M., Groll, D., Ricciardelli, R., MacDermid, J., Keiley, M., & Carleton, R. N. (2021). Mental Health of Canadian Firefighters: The Impact of Sleep. nternational Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18, 13256. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182413256