14 DAY TRIAL // Scientists from the UT Southwestern Medical Center have recently discovered, after a five-year study, that sleep patterns in children and teenagers play an important role in predicting depression risks years later in life. For some time, researchers have known that adults who are depressed experience rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep faster when they go to bed, but they were unsure that this causal relation held up in teenagers as well. Experts found that the children who experienced shorter REM sleep latency were more likely to develop depression later on.
The study, which is available online and in the July issue of the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, also found that most exposed to this peril were children and teens coming from families with an existing predisposition for depression. In these children, in spite of the fact that there was no clinical depression diagnostics given, REM latency – the period of time between when you fall asleep and until REM appears – was found to be very small, which could be considered a clear indicator of risk.
“Sleep is probably more helpful in determining who is at risk for developing depression than in being a diagnostic marker for depression since REM latency of those adolescents was shorter before they even developed the illness,” says UT Southwestern professor of psychiatry Dr. Uma Rao, who was also the lead author of the new scientific paper.
“Comparing these younger adolescents to those already showing depression obscures study results and can affect our understanding of the underlying mechanisms for depression as well as its treatment. Long-term studies may be helpful in determining which research participants should be considered as part of the control group. This study is an initial step in determining baseline measures that differentiate healthy adolescents from those who are likely to develop depression, bipolar disorder and other mental diseases as they get older,” the expert adds.
“Depression is not mediated by sleep alone. If we can identify factors such as sleep and cortisol and their role, we could start the prevention process before the disease leads children and teenagers down a path well behind their peers educationally and socially,” Dr. Rao concludes.