放課後等デイサービスの児童生徒に対する睡眠と疲労の客観的健康評価

Abstract

In recent years, as a result of changes taking place in their living environments, children are going to sleep later. In step with those changes, a larger number of children are sleeping fewer hours. As sleep deprivation becomes routine, children’s life habits are disrupted and excessive fatigue accumulates, eventually beginning to adversely affect school life and physical and mental growth and development. We conducted a study on sleep and fatigue in children who attend after-school day care services, with the aim of using the resulting information in health education relating to sleep and fatigue in childhood. As a result of comparing children attending after-school day care services with general children, children attending after-school day care services had significantly higher mental fatigue scores and total fatigue scores in the subjective symptom survey. In the sleep-wake rhythm analysis, children attending after-school day care services showed a decrease in daytime activity, an increase in the number of naps, and an increase in the number of awakenings at night, as well as lower sleep efficiency, but significantly longer sleep duration. Autonomic function analysis showed that Log LF, indicating sympathetic and parasympathetic activity, and Log (LF/HF), indicating relative sympathetic tone, were significantly higher in the after-school day service children.