A regular sleep schedule is important to your mood and mental health. A new study by researchers have found a link between an irregular sleep schedule and a person’s mood including an increased risk of depression over the long term. This includes getting fewer hours of sleep overall or staying up late most nights.
Even your mood the next day can be affected by varying the time you go to bed or waking times. Having a regular sleep schedule is important, according to the research conducted by a team from Michigan Medicine, the University of Michigan’s academic medical center, uses data from direct measurements of the sleep and mood of more than 2,100 early-career physicians over one year.
The interns all experienced the long intense work days and irregular work schedules typical of this time in medical training. Those factors, changing from day to day, altered their ability to have regular sleep schedules.
The report is based on data gathered by tracking the interns’ sleep and other activity through commercial devices worn on their wrists, and asking them to report their daily mood on a smartphone app and take quarterly tests for signs of depression.
Those whose devices showed they had variable sleep schedules were more likely to score higher on standardized depression symptom questionnaires, and to have lower daily mood ratings. Those who regularly stayed up late, or got the fewest hours of sleep, also scored higher on depression symptoms and lower on daily mood. The findings add to what’s already known about the association between sleep, daily mood and long-term risk of depression.
The findings add to what’s already known about the association between sleep, daily mood and long-term risk of depression.
They highlight sleep consistency as an important factor to target in depression and wellness.
One author of the study is Yu Fang, M.S.E., a research specialist at the Michigan Neuroscience Institute.
The study is published in npj Digital Medicine.