Sleep Health and Disorders in Military Personnel
Summary
Military personnel frequently experience sleep deficiency and disorders due to operational demands, environmental stressors and irregular schedules. Chronic insufficient sleep and circadian disruption have been associated with cognitive impairment, reduced physical performance, mood disturbances and heightened risk for cardiometabolic and neuropsychiatric conditions. Common disorders include insomnia, obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) and circadian rhythm misalignment, often compounded by comorbidities such as post-traumatic stress, chronic pain and traumatic brain injury. Field deployments and shift work exacerbate sleep fragmentation, impair readiness and may lead to non-deployability. Emerging evidence demonstrates bidirectional links between poor sleep and inflammatory processes, mood symptoms and cognitive decline. Interventions range from pharmacological approaches to cognitive behavioural therapies, wearable and just-in-time adaptive digital tools. Ongoing research emphasises tailored countermeasures suited to mission profiles, alongside leadership-driven sleep promotion strategies and integrated surveillance systems. Understanding the epidemiology, underlying mechanisms and effective treatments of sleep disturbances in military settings is essential for optimising operational performance, safeguarding long-term health and informing policy across international defence forces.
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Sleep Health and Disorders in Military Personnel publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in sleep health and disorders in military personnel across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Insomnia: Difficulty in initiating or maintaining sleep accompanied by impaired daytime functioning.
Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA): Repeated episodes of upper airway obstruction during sleep leading to oxygen desaturation and arousals.
Circadian misalignment: Disruption of the endogenous sleep–wake cycle relative to environmental cues.
Polysomnography: Comprehensive overnight recording of sleep physiology including brain activity, respiration and movement.
Apnoea–hypopnoea index (AHI): The number of apnoea and hypopnoea events per hour of sleep used to quantify the severity of sleep apnoea.
References
- Insufficient Sleep and Behavioral Health in the Military: A 5-Country Perspective. Current Psychiatry Reports (2024).
- Sleep in the United States Military. Neuropsychopharmacology (2019).
- Improved Sleep in Military Personnel is Associated with Changes in the Expression of Inflammatory Genes and Improvement in Depression Symptoms. Frontiers in Psychiatry (2015).
- Clinical Feasibility of a Just-in-Time Adaptive Intervention App (iREST) as a Behavioral Sleep Treatment in a Military Population: Feasibility Comparative Effectiveness Study. Journal of Medical Internet Research (2018).
- Prevalence and predictors of insomnia and sleep medication use in a large tri-service US military sample. Sleep Health (2021).
- Sleep disturbances and predictors of nondeployability among active-duty Army soldiers: an odds ratio analysis of medical healthcare data from fiscal year 2018. Military Medical Research (2020).
- Risk factors of persistent insomnia among survivors of traumatic injury: a retrospective cohort study.. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine (2021).
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