Sleepless Behind the Walls: Chilean Prison Guards Show Alarming Insomnia Levels

Prison guards in Chile’s Valparaíso Region are sleeping so little on duty that their average nightly sleep amounts to barely two and three-quarter hours, and the vast majority now score in the clinical range for insomnia, according to a new cross-sectional study published in Frontiers in Public Health. The research, conducted among 43 armed guards from five correctional facilities, found that 83.7 percent of participants exceeded the threshold for clinically significant insomnia on the Insomnia Severity Index, with a mean score of 17.87 that falls squarely within the moderate clinical insomnia band. The findings paint one of the starkest occupational sleep-health profiles documented in the correctional literature and raise urgent questions about the working conditions inside Latin America’s penitentiary system.

The study, led by researchers at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez together with health psychologists from Gendarmería de Chile, focused on a population that remains strikingly underrepresented in occupational health research. Participants were young and overwhelmingly male, with a mean age of 24.34 years, and most had served between one and three years. Data were collected between January and February 2025 through individually administered, self-report questionnaires completed in private settings at each facility, with ethical approval from the university’s ethics committee and written informed consent from every participant. Because prison guards are frequently absent on sick leave, the 43 respondents represented 33.8 percent of the total guard workforce of 127 across the five participating prisons, a proportion the authors argue is substantial given the restricted access to this institutional environment.

The working conditions described in the study are unusual even among safety-critical occupations. Chilean prison guards begin their careers as armed guards stationed in perimeter posts, patrolling with handguns and shotguns while wearing bulletproof vests and helmets. Guard posts are deliberately built without toilets or chairs to prevent drowsiness, and guards are not permitted to leave their posts during shifts, even to eat. Shifts nominally run four hours with a four-hour break, but they can extend to 12 or 15 hours depending on staffing. Many guards live inside the prison in shared rooms, and shift work with irregular schedules is a defining feature of the job, a pattern long associated with circadian misalignment, fatigue, and sleep disturbances.

The sleep data collected in the study are severe by any standard. On duty, guards reported an average of 2.75 hours of sleep per night, compared with 6.8 hours on off-duty nights, and they reported waking feeling rested on only 1.46 days per week. Even the off-duty figure falls short of the seven to nine hours recommended for adults, suggesting that officers never fully recover from on-duty sleep loss. Subjective sleep quality ratings were uniformly poor: 37.2 percent of participants rated their sleep as fair, 37.2 percent as poor, and 25.6 percent as very poor, with not a single guard rating their sleep as good or excellent. In comparison, a Canadian study of correctional workers by Ricciardelli and colleagues found 64.9 percent screening positive for clinically significant insomnia symptoms, with averages of 6.0 hours of sleep on work nights, so the Chilean figures represent an even more extreme picture, though the authors caution that differences in measurement procedures and contexts limit direct comparison.

The insomnia symptoms spanned all three phases of the sleep cycle. More than half of participants, 55.8 percent, reported moderate to extremely high difficulty falling asleep, 74.4 percent reported moderate to extreme difficulty staying asleep, and 73.5 percent reported moderate to very severe problems with waking too early. The functional consequences were equally pronounced: 78.8 percent described themselves as dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with their sleep, more than 60 percent said sleep problems interfered a lot or very much with daily functioning, 76.8 percent believed their sleep problems were very noticeable to others, and more than half expressed high or very high concern about the issue. Within the sample, 67.4 percent of guards fell into the moderate clinical insomnia range and 16.3 percent into the severe range.

Psychological well-being, measured with the abbreviated 18-item Ryff Psychological Wellbeing Scale, was moderate overall, with a mean total score of 59.9. The lowest subscale scores appeared on environmental mastery, at 7.44, and personal growth, at 7.93, both within the moderate band but well below values reported in comparable occupational studies. Environmental mastery reflects a person’s sense of competence in managing daily affairs, while personal growth captures feelings of continued development and self-realization. The authors suggest that the unpredictability, limited autonomy, and exposure to potentially violent events inherent to correctional work directly undermine environmental mastery, while the repetitive and constrained nature of the job may limit opportunities for professional development. The highest score, on positive relationships with others at 11.2, hints that interpersonal connection may act as a protective factor, though the large standard deviation of 3.63 indicates that some officers experience considerable social isolation. For context, the authors note that registered nurses in mental health settings have reported mean subscale values around 14.23 on the same instrument, and even members of a high-stress paramilitary road safety corps in Nigeria scored higher.

Perhaps the most statistically striking result was what the study did not find. Correlation analyses revealed no significant association between insomnia severity and overall psychological well-being, nor with any of the six Ryff subscales. However, insomnia scores were positively correlated with years of service at the institution, with a Spearman correlation of 0.349 and a p-value of 0.023, indicating that longer tenure was associated with higher subjective insomnia severity. The authors emphasize that the cross-sectional design precludes any causal interpretation: the data cannot determine whether insomnia erodes well-being, whether psychological distress fuels insomnia, or whether both stem from shared occupational stressors. They note that theoretical and empirical literature points to bidirectional pathways, since sleep deprivation impairs executive function and emotion regulation, while low environmental mastery and rumination can sustain hyperarousal that interferes with sleep initiation and maintenance.

The study also documented occupational and behavioral patterns that may compound the problem. Just over half of participants, 53.5 percent, reported daily consumption of energy drinks such as Monster or Red Bull, a prevalence the authors describe as substantially higher than in general young adult populations and as a likely maladaptive coping strategy for fatigue. High caffeine intake can disrupt sleep architecture, reduce total sleep time, and lengthen sleep latency, potentially creating a self-perpetuating cycle in which inadequate sleep drives stimulant use, which further degrades sleep and deepens sleep debt. Meanwhile, 60.5 percent of guards reported not feeling cared for by the institution, 58.1 percent had taken at least one sick leave in the past year, with 25.6 percent taking one leave and 32.5 percent taking two or more, and 37.2 percent had considered seeing a psychologist or psychiatrist. Only 18.6 percent reported experiencing violence at work in the previous year, and nearly all, 97.7 percent, had someone they could call when needed.

The authors are candid about the study’s limitations. The sample of 43 is small and self-selective, limiting statistical power and generalizability beyond the five Valparaíso facilities. The predominantly male composition, 90.6 percent, prevented any analysis of gender differences, which the authors recommend addressing in future work given the highly masculinized context of Chilean prisons. All measures were self-reported, making them vulnerable to recall and social desirability bias, and perceived sleep duration is particularly prone to misperception; objective tools such as actigraphy or physiological stress markers could sharpen future assessments. The cross-sectional design rules out causal inference, and variables such as mental health history, substance use, and physical health conditions were not assessed.

Even with those caveats, the authors argue that the findings amount to a public health concern within this occupational group and that working conditions permitting an average of 2.75 hours of sleep on duty are difficult to reconcile with basic principles of sleep science and occupational health. They call for multi-level interventions, including fatigue management programs, accessible mental health services, organizational culture change to strengthen perceived institutional support, and policy reforms covering shift length, rest periods, and staffing ratios, along with internal training on sleep hygiene and caffeine use. Officer health, they conclude, is not merely a matter of occupational justice: guards experiencing severe insomnia and psychological strain cannot perform demanding and dangerous work safely, and the consequences extend to institutional security, the welfare of incarcerated people, and public health more broadly. Longitudinal research following guards from the start of their careers, they suggest, would be the next step in untangling how correctional work progressively erodes sleep and well-being.

Subject of Research: Insomnia severity and psychological well-being among Chilean prison guards

Article Title: Insomnia severity and multidimensional psychological well-being in Chilean correctional personnel: a cross-sectional study

Article References: Benjumeda Wynhoven, I., Varela Sepúlveda, S., Bravo Lara, R. B., & Ocampo Vélez, G. (2026). Insomnia severity and multidimensional psychological well-being in Chilean correctional personnel: a cross-sectional study. Frontiers in Public Health, 14, Article 1782308. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1782308

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2026.1782308

Keywords: insomnia, prison guards, occupational health, sleep quality, psychological well-being, Chile, shift work, energy drinks, correctional officers, Ryff scale, Gendarmería de Chile, cross-sectional study