OBJECTIVE:

Disturbed sleep is a common complaint among patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that appears in the reexperiencing and hyperarousal symptom clusters in DSM-IV. The causal relationship between sleep complaints and PTSD is unclear.

METHOD:

Self-reported insomnia and excessive daytime sleepiness were assessed in 102 victims of motor vehicle accidents and 19 comparison subjects 1 week and 1, 3, 6, and 12 months after the trauma. At 12 months the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R was administered to determine diagnoses of PTSD.

RESULTS:

Twenty-six of the accident victims but none of the comparison subjects met the criteria for PTSD. Logistic regression models indicated that sleep complaints from 1 month on were significant in predicting PTSD at 1 year.

CONCLUSIONS:

These results suggest that on the basis of sleep complaints as early as 1 month after the trauma, it is possible to detect subjects who will later develop chronic PTSD.