Sleepy schoolboy blues? : Sleep and depression across the school term

Aims: Adolescents experience a change in sleep patterns, together with a later sleep onset time compared to children in younger age groups. This, in combination with early school starting times can restrict the time available for sleep. As a consequence, sleep loss can accumulate across the school week. If sleep loss is not recovered on weekends, a cumulative sleep debt may develop across weeks of the school term. Cumulative sleep loss has been linked to depression. We sought to determine whether adolescent males accumulated a sleep debt across the term, and if so, whether the loss was associated with the onset of depressive symptoms. Methods: Eleven healthy adolescent males, with a mean age of 15.29 (±0.83) years, participated in an 11-week field study. Baseline testing occurred in the pre-term holiday, prior to the term commencement. Participants wore an activity-monitoring device (Actiwatch) at all times and completed sleep diaries daily. The Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21) was completed weekly. Mixed-effects models examined differences in weekly sleep across the term and any associations with depressive symptoms. Results: On average, daily sleep was 18 minutes longer in the pre-term period than during the term period. Participants spent less time in bed on school nights than on weekends during the school term (p<.05), but to some extent minimized sleep loss by going to bed earlier (p<.05). Thus, the hypothesised progressive weekly reduction in term sleep amount did not occur (p>.05) because participants advanced weekly bed times and increased sleep duration on the weekends. The changes observed in sleep were not associated with depressive symptoms. Discussion: This pilot study provides insight into sleeping habits during a school term. Whilst a relationship with depression was not significant, future studies could investigate a clinical population rather than the normal population of adolescents sampled here.