Impact of a Multicomponent Program on Sleep Duration and Depressive Symptoms in Overweight Adolescents in Schools in the Northeast Brazil

Abstract

The health promotion in our schools represents a tool of great importance for public health, and the development of some intervention actions to promote healthy habits has been encouraged, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the present study aimed to analyze the effects of a multicomponent intervention on the duration and quality of sleeping, eating disorders and depressive symptoms in obese adolescents from full-time schools in the city of Fortaleza, CE. This cluster is a randomized controlled trial with 127 (50.4% female) adolescents from the 7th to 9th grade in public schools in Fortaleza, Northeast Brazil. After agreement, three schools were randomly selected for intervention or control groups (3 schools in each group), and all eligible students were invited to participate in the study. The "Fortaleça sua saúde" program was carried out during a school year and included three main components: Teacher training (including face-to-face meetings, a social media platform, and a handbook with lesson plans); improvements in the physical activity environment in schools; and educational strategies. The control schools continued with their traditional schedule. Baseline and post-intervention evaluations included: subjective sleep quality, measured by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index; depressive symptoms, assessed by the Population Screening Scale for Depression; and eating disorders, evaluated using the Eating Attitudes Test-26. The results of this study identified an increase in sleep duration among adolescents in the intervention group (7.42 vs. 7.79; p = 0.018) and a significant decrease (13.5 vs. 12.0; p = 0.003) in depressive symptom scores compared to those in the control group (14.0 vs. 12.5; p = 1.00). Additionally, adolescents who participated in the program showed a 2.32 times greater chance (1.01 – 5.40; p = 0.049) of not presenting depressive symptoms. The results of this study suggest that interventions in the scholar environment can lead to an improvement in health indicators among obese adolescents.