Nursing home residents' psychological barriers to sleeping well: a qualitative study.

BACKGROUND Sleep disorders are a relevant problem in the nursing home and difficult to treat for the residents' GPs. No intervention has yet addressed psychological factors contributing to nursing home residents' sleep disorders. OBJECTIVE To explore what nursing home residents perceive as psychological barriers to sleeping well. METHODS A qualitative research design. We conducted episodic interviews with 30 nursing home residents. Data were analysed by thematic coding. We constructed a typology of residents regarding their perceived barriers to sleeping well. RESULTS The interviewed residents perceived traumatic memories, family problems, worries about their situation and future, disturbing events during the day, appointments the next day, anxiety and dreams and nightmares as psychological barriers to sleeping well. The residents could be allocated into three types: residents of Type I identified only non-psychological barriers, residents of Type II worried mainly about their current situation and residents of Type III suffered from traumatic memories and were easily disturbed by any type of psychological distress. CONCLUSIONS Our results show the high importance of psychological factors for sleep disorders of the elderly. Future research should address nursing home residents' psychological barriers to sleeping well and the presented typology should be operationalized and tested quantitatively.