Sleep Deficiency in Adolescents

Impact of sleep and mental health in adolescence: an overview

“…Adolescents may present with one or more different types of sleep impairment, such as increased sleep onset latency (i.e. the time required to transition from wakefulness to sleep), later bedtimes or erratic sleep patterns, poor sleep hygiene, reduced weekday sleep duration, reduced total sleep time, and increased daytime sleepiness [12,14,15]. Adolescents also experience social jetlag, which describes inconsistent timing of sleep across the week, whereby they sleep less during weekdays, and subsequently attempt to compensate on the weekends by sleeping more and waking up later [16 & ].…”

“…Adolescents also experience social jetlag, which describes inconsistent timing of sleep across the week, whereby they sleep less during weekdays, and subsequently attempt to compensate on the weekends by sleeping more and waking up later [16 & ]. Adolescents often have a biologically mediated delayed sleep-wake phase, such that their internal biological sleep clock initiates sleep onset to a later time [14,15,17], with evidence that adolescents begin feeling tired around 11 p.m. [9]. When this biological shift is extreme, it leads to functional impairment due to social norms (ex: early school start times) [3].…”

“…Most adolescents keep at least one electronic device in the bedroom overnight, which is associated with difficulties falling asleep and increased overnight awakenings [15]. Use of electronic devices interrupts sleep through multiple mechanisms.…”

“…There is a 2-5 times greater probability of adolescents with insomnia experiencing symptoms of depression when compared to adolescents who sleep well [24,34 && ], which is not surprising as sleep difficulties are among a core criterion for the diagnosis of major depressive disorder (MDD) [32 && ]. Short sleep duration is associated with an increase in depressive symptoms in teens [15,21]. Similarly, in depressed teens, particularly males, there are increased rates of short sleep duration, longer sleep latency, and overnight awakenings [21].…”

“…More recently, researchers have attempted to examine the bidirectional relationship between various sleep problems and several mental health diagnoses and symptom severity. Evidence shows that sleep deprivation may predict future depressive symptoms and MDD diagnosis at follow-up [15,21]…”