Adolescent Sleep, Risk Behaviors, and Depressive Symptoms: Are They Linked?

Abstract

To explore how weekday and weekend sleep patterns are related to adolescent substance use, depressive symptoms, and school truancy. Selfreport surveys of 242 youth (93.4% white, mean age 16.4 years). Longer weekday sleep duration was inversely associated with depressive symptoms, past month alcohol use, and drunkenness. Later weekend bedtime and wake-times, compared to those of weekdays, were associated with increased substance use and truancy. Weekday sleep duration appears to be protective for substance use, depression and school truancy for teenagers. However, inconsistent sleep patterns between weekdays and weekends were associated with a range of markers for adolescent risk.