Skip to main content

Adolescent Sleep, Risk Behaviors, and Depressive Symptoms: Are They Linked?

Buy Article:

$39.00 + tax (Refund Policy)

Objective : To explore how weekday and weekend sleep patterns are related to adolescent substance use, depressive symptoms, and school truancy.

Methods : Selfreport surveys of 242 youth (93.4 white, mean age 16.4 years).

Results : Longer weekday sleep duration was inversely associated with depressive symptoms, past month alcohol use, and drunkenness. Later weekend bedtime and wake-times, compared to those of weekdays, were associated with increased substance use and truancy.

Conclusions : Weekday sleep duration appears to be protective for substance use, depression and school truancy for teenagers. However, inconsistent sleep patterns between weekdays and weekends were associated with a range of markers for adolescent risk.

Keywords: adolescents; depressive symptoms; risk behaviors; sleep

Document Type: Research Article

Publication date: 01 March 2010

More about this publication?
  • The American Journal of Health Behavior seeks to improve the quality of life through multidisciplinary health efforts in fostering a better understanding of the multidimensional nature of both individuals and social systems as they relate to health behaviors.

    The Journal aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the impact of personal attributes, personality characteristics, behavior patterns, social structure, and processes on health maintenance, health restoration, and health improvement; to disseminate knowledge of holistic, multidisciplinary approaches to designing and implementing effective health programs; and to showcase health behavior analysis skills that have been proven to affect health improvement and recovery.

  • Editorial Board
  • Information for Authors
  • Submit a Paper
  • Subscribe to this Title
  • Review Board
  • Reprints and Permissions
  • Ingenta Connect is not responsible for the content or availability of external websites
  • Access Key
  • Free content
  • Partial Free content
  • New content
  • Open access content
  • Partial Open access content
  • Subscribed content
  • Partial Subscribed content
  • Free trial content