A new study of U.S. adolescents and young adults shows that "catching up" on weekends after insufficient sleep during the week is associated with a significantly lower risk of depressive symptoms. The research team pointed out that for people aged 16 to 24, those who significantly made up for their sleep deficit during the workday on weekends were about 41% less likely to report depressive symptoms than those who did not catch up on sleep.
The study, completed in collaboration with the University of Oregon and SUNY Upstate Medical University, was published in the academic journal "Journal of Affective Disorders" and focused on late adolescence and early youth, a critical age group where sleep disorders are common and depression is high. Similar studies in the past have mostly focused on middle school students in China, South Korea and other places. This time, data from 16 to 24-year-old samples from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 2021 and 2023 were used to fill the gap in the relationship between weekend "catch-up sleep" behavior and mental health in this age group.
In the study, participants were asked to report their typical bedtime and wake-up times on weekdays and weekends respectively. Based on this, researchers calculated the increase in sleep duration on weekends compared with weekdays as an indicator of "catch-up sleep on weekends." At the same time, participants were also asked to report their emotional status. If they said "feeling sad or depressed every day", they were defined as having depressive symptoms, which was used to analyze the statistical association between sleep patterns and mental health.
The research team pointed out that the ideal situation is for teenagers to get 8 to 10 hours of adequate sleep at a fixed time every day, but in reality, a large number of teenagers are overwhelmed by multiple tasks such as academic pressure, social activities, extracurricular projects, and part-time jobs, and it is difficult to maintain a regular and adequate schedule during the workday. Against this backdrop, modestly extending weekend sleep time has become a realistic option for many teenagers to make up for sleep deficits, and data show that this catch-up behavior is significantly associated with a lower risk of depressive symptoms.
Melynda Casement, a psychologist at the University of Oregon and one of the co-authors of the study, pointed out that the endogenous biological clock changes in adolescence will promote the shift of sleep rhythm to "late to bed and late to wake up", making teenagers more like "night owls" rather than "morning people". This trend usually lasts until around the age of 18 to 20 before beginning to reverse. For many teenagers, the natural sleep rhythm is closer to going to bed at 11 p.m. and waking up at 8 a.m., but the generally early start times of American high schools conflict with this circadian rhythm, further exacerbating sleep deprivation during workdays.
Against this background, many sleep scientists and medical workers have been calling for postponement of school start times to reduce the mismatch between the biological clock and the institutional time. Casement emphasized that if it is safe and feasible to ensure that teenagers cannot sleep enough on weekdays, they should be allowed to sleep longer on weekends. "This kind of supplementary sleep is likely to have a protective effect to a certain extent."
The study also reminded that depression has become one of the important sources of disability burden for people aged 16 to 24. “Disability” here refers not only to severe disease states, but also to impairment of daily functions such as tardiness, absence from work, and inability to complete tasks on time. Therefore, identifying intervenable factors related to the risk of depression and designing intervention strategies that are more relevant to real life is of great significance to public health and clinical practice in this age group. Sleep patterns, especially catching up on sleep on weekends, are an entry point with room for manipulation.
Although the study results provide "beneficial" statistical evidence for catching up on weekend sleep, the research team still emphasizes that catching up on sleep should not be seen as a long-term solution to replace regular and adequate sleep. Continued late bedtime and short sleep may still have adverse effects on physical and cognitive functions. They believe that a more reasonable goal is still to get as close to a stable and adequate amount of sleep as possible every day. When the reality is that the goal cannot be achieved, using moderate sleep on weekends to partially offset the mental health risks is a pragmatic option worthy of serious consideration by parents, educators and teenagers themselves.
Compiled from /ScitechDaily