Sleep disturbance has been reported to be highly prevalent in cancer patients during cancer treatment and survivors of cancer continue to experience chronic sleep disturbance following the cessation of treatment. Reported up to 79% in cancer patients during active treatment, and up to 51% following treatment at 9 years post diagnosis, sleep disturbance continues to place significant burden on cognitive, social and affective functioning. Another highly prevalent variable that has been commonly reported to co-occur with sleep disturbance for patients with cancer is psychological distress. 34.3% of cancer patients that experienced high distress also appeared to experience sleep disturbance.
Acknowledging that psychological distress and sleep disturbance are closely knit, development of new interventions in reducing sleep disturbance is premature without fully understanding the perceived mechanisms and environment to which foster sleep problems in the presence of psychological distress. Exploration of such areas would help to better explain the relationship between psychological distress and sleep, and provide additional information into building a conceptual framework for the development and maintenance of sleep disturbance. This would provide a better foundation for the development and refinement of a better fitted intervention. Thus, the objectives of the qualitative study is to provide insight into the lived experience of having sleep disturbance after cancer diagnosis, and to ascertain the factors involved in developing and maintaining sleep disturbance between patients with differing distress levels in order to facilitate the development of an intervention for sleep disturbance.
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Chan, J., Ng, D. W. L., Liao, Q., Fielding, R., Soong, I., Chan, K. K. L., ... & Lam, W. W. T. (2023). Trajectories of sleep disturbance in cancer survivors during the first 2 years post-treatment. Sleep, zsad052
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