The influence of subjective sleep quality on the association between eveningness and depressive symptoms

Charlotte, Mary Horne, Alexandra, Lucy Watts, Ray Norbury

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Abstract

Background. A burgeoning corpus suggests that eveningness is associated with increased risk for depression, antidepressant use and depressive symptoms. Eveningness, however, is also associated with poor sleep quality and the unique role of eveningness in impaired psychological function and risk for psychiatric disorder remains to be elucidated. The goal of the current study, therefore, was to examine the inter-relationships between eveningness, subjective sleep quality and depressive symptoms in healthy participants free of current or previous depression and sleep disorder. Method. A total of 167 healthy participants, free from current or previous depression or sleep disorder, completed the reduced Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (rMEQ), the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and the Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). Bootstrap mediation analysis for a simple mediation model including rMEQ, PSQI and CES-D was applied. Results. Eveningness was associated with increased depressive symptoms and mediation analysis showed that this relationship was partly mediated by sleep quality. Conclusions. Our results suggest that indicators of impaired psychological function observed in healthy, never-depressed, evening-type individuals cannot be attributed exclusively to disturbed sleep. We suggest that interventions that target both sleep quality and dysfunctionl cognitive styles would be optimal to promote well-being in evening-type individuals. © 2018, Taylor & Francis. The attached document (embargoed until 28/05/2019) is an author produced version of a paper published in BIOLOGICAL RHYTHM RESEARCH uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self- archiving policy. The final published version (version of record) is available online at the link. Some minor differences between this version and the final published version may remain. We suggest you refer to the final published version should you wish to cite from it.
Original languageEnglish
JournalBiological Rhythm Research
Early online date28 May 2018
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 28 May 2018

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