Iranian Journal of War and Public Health

  Abstracts

  Background and Purpose: Deprivation of sleep cause long term physical and emotional effects, soldiers which attend in war report sleep deprivation and disturbance during and commonly after war but there haven't done extensive researchs about these disturbance in chemical and non chemical victims and its possible difference, so this study conducted to determine and compare sleep disturbances in chemical and non chemical victims of war.

  Materials and Methods: In this descriptive- analytic study 95 chemical and 95 non chemical victims were selected by stratified sampling and group matching according to age, duration of attending in war, percent of injury, literacy, marital status and…. instrument was a questionnaire which had two parts: demographic data and 5 sentences about sleep disturbances which was given from Mississippi scale for combat- related posttraumatic stress disorder.

  Results : finding showed that there was significant difference between difficulties with falling sleep according to easily sleeping (p= 0.04) and afraid to go to sleep (p= 0.03) which show more problem in chemical victims. About nightmares there wasnt significant difference and about difficulty staying sleep there was significant difference (p= 0.04). There was correlation between combat duration and percent of wounding in chemical wounded. there was significant diffrence between physical illness, drug abuse and with sleep continnuty and nightmers in two groups.

  conclusion : on considering that sleep disturbance was seen in non chemical victim and more seriously in chemical victims, consulting, caring and hygienic interventions are unavoidable necessity.

  Key words : Sleep disturbance, Chemical Victim, non Chemical Victim, War