The moderating effect of resilience in the association between insomnia severity and PTSD symptoms in Lebanese adolescents in the aftermath of the 2023 earthquake

ABSTRACT

The interplay between insomnia and PTSD symptoms remains misunderstood, and seems to be influenced by other factors like individual resilience. Our study examined the moderating role of resilience in the relationship between insomnia and PTSD symptoms among a sample of Lebanese adolescents, in the aftermath of the 2023 earthquake. This cross sectional study, conducted in April, 2 months after the earthquake, enrolled 546 Lebanese adolescents. We used the Sleep Self Report, the Resilience Scale for Adolescents and the 13-item Children’s Impact of Event Scale. The interaction insomnia severity by resilience was significantly associated with PTSD scores. At low, moderate and high resilience levels, higher insomnia severity was significantly associated with lower PTSD. Resilience moderated the relationship between insomnia and PTSD, mitigating the detrimental impact of disrupted sleep on PTSD symptoms. This data can guide healthcare administrators and psychiatric caregivers in classifying risk factors and implementing interventions to predict PTSD development.

KEYWORDS:

• Earthquake
• insomnia
• resilience
• PTSD
• lebanon

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

FFR, SO and SH designed the study; DD drafted the manuscript; SH carried out the analysis and interpreted the results; DM, MD and FS collected the data; RH reviewed the paper for intellectual content; all authors reviewed the final manuscript and gave their consent.

Ethics approval and consent to participate.

The Ethics and Research Committee at the Lebanese International University approved this study protocol (2023RC–009-LIUSOP). A written informed consent was considered obtained from each participant when submitting the online form and from parents or the legal guardian(s) of the participants below 16 years of age involved in the study. All experiments were performed in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations (Declaration of Helsinki).

Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to restrictions from the ethics committee but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.