Friday, January 01, 2010

Study finds earliler to bed makes teens mentally healthier

One of my brothers posted this on Facebook - The earlier to bed, the healthier the head, which starts:

----------
Teens allowed to go to bed after midnight were almost a quarter – 24 per cent – more likely to suffer from depression and a fifth more likely to think about self harm than those who were set bedtimes of 10pm or earlier.
The authors of the study, published in the journal Sleep, said that the more sleep adolescents get the better it is for their mental health.

Adolescents who usually slept for five or fewer hours per night were 71 per cent more likely to suffer from depression and 48 per cent more likely to think about committing suicide than those who reported getting eight hours of nightly sleep, it was claimed.
Researchers studied more than 15,000 students and their parents at US schools from age 12 to 17.

----------


----------
Technorati tags: sleep

2 comments:

RedHatRob said...

I don't doubt there is a correlation.

But the question of causality remains open.

hypothesis 1: lack of structure and reduced sleeptime cause depression
hypothesis 2: depression interferes with sleep & structure
hypothesis 3: some unspecified cause (or causes) results in both depression AND a lack of sleep

Rob said...

subscribe