Divorced middle-aged man? This won't help you sleep

Published on Sunday 3 August 2008 21:18

DIVORCED middle-aged men are becomingly increasingly bad-tempered and emotional and are under-performing at work because of a lack of sleep, a study revealed yesterday.

The Sleep Report, based on a survey by market researchers, found that divorced male lawyers, aged 55, who lived in London were the UK's worst sleepers and were suffering problems as a result.

The UK-wide research asked 2,000 adults to reveal what disturbed their sleep at night.

It found that divorced London male lawyers in their fifties had an average of four hours' sleep each night.

The study also pinpointed single female bar workers, aged 20, from the east Midlands as Britain's best sleepers, with about ten hours' sleep a night.

Meanwhile, the Welsh way of life seems to come with the fewest economic and personal worries.

Personal finances kept only 13 per cent of people in Wales awake at night, compared with 27 per cent of Londoners and 26 per cent in the North-west of England.

In Northern Ireland, people's social life caused problems, with 34 per cent of those questioned likely to lose sleep as a result. Only 15 per cent blamed the credit crunch for sleepless nights.

Just under half of people in East Anglia (43 per cent), 40 per cent in south-west England and 40 per cent of those in Scotland said an inability to get comfortable affected their sleeping patterns.

A baby requires around 17 hours' sleep a day, whereas an older child needs about nine to ten hours a day.

The average adult needs seven to eight hours' sleep each night.