Symptoms of Depression and Difficulty Initiating Sleep from Early Adolescence to Early Adulthood: A Longitudinal Study

Study objectives: To assess the direction of the relationship and degree of shared associations between symptoms of depression and difficulty initiating sleep (DIS) from early adolescence to early adulthood.

Design: Cross-sectional and longitudinal assessment of the symptoms of depression-DIS association from early adolescence (age 13 y) to early adulthood (age 23 y).

Setting: Hordaland, Norway.

Participants: There were 1,105 individuals (55% male) who took part in the Norwegian Longitudinal Health Behaviour Study (NLHB) and participated at least once across seven data collection waves during the years 1990-2000.

Interventions: N/A.

Measurements and results: Characteristic data were obtained during the first assessment. Symptoms of depression and instances of DIS were assessed during each data collection wave. Symptoms of depression and DIS were associated in all data waves, and one-step cross-lagged bivariate correlations were significant and comparatively high for both factors. Structural equation modelling indicated that DIS and symptoms of depression at wave 1 remain relatively stable across waves (all P < 0.001), and a significant and consistent unidirectional cross-lagged effect was noted running from symptoms of depression to DIS from early adolescence to early adulthood. DIS is only marginally and inconsistently associated with the lagged symptoms of depression score across waves.

Conclusions: These results suggest that symptoms of depression established in early adolescence are a moderate predictor of difficulty initiating sleep (DIS) in early adulthood, whereas the reverse association of DIS predicting depression was not convincingly supported. These findings are in contrast to previous findings that suggest sleep problems as a risk factor for the later development of depression.