Mental Health in the Context of Information Society: To the Issue of Changes in the Pathogenesis and Pathomorphism of Diseases (by the Model of Disturbances of the Sleep-Wake Cycle)

Abstract

Information technologies affect the most important problem of subjective boundaries and their privacy. Electronic gadgets are regularly used at night or in the late evening, which is associated with the complaints of sleep disturbances on the non-clinical level. The present study aims at clarifying the relationship between anxiety, depression and the use of electronic gadgets in the evening and night, and the complaints of sleep disturbances in adult respondents without any diagnosed sleep disorders. It is shown that the association between the use of gadgets at night and complaints of sleep dis¬turbances remains after controlling for the level of anxiety and depression. This means that their use in the evening and night induced by the nature of the information-com¬munication technology itself is a separate predictor of sleep disorders, metaphorically speaking, a new “acting” force in somnology. This effect manifests not only in anxiety, depression and other behavioral factors of sleep hygiene disturbances, but reveals itself more obviously in the situation of relative well-being at a low level of anxiety.

Keywords

• information society
• the pathogenesis and pathomorphism of disease
• the sleep-wake cycle
• insomnia