Sleep and anxieties in Brazilian children: the role of cultural and environmental factors in child sleep disturbance.

To test the contextual hypothesis of sleep disturbance, disadvantaged urban Brazilian children's self-reported fears were correlated with parental reports of children's sleep disturbance. Fears of death at the hands of "death squads," environment-related worries and other fears reflecting Brazil's political, religious, and collective culture all correlated with sleep disturbance. Results are contrasted with findings of earlier studies on sleep and anxieties in samples of learning-disabled adolescents and victims of lightning.