Rx for Teen Moodiness: Sleep

Feb. 9, 2004 -- Got a moody teen at home? More sleep may be the answer.

Teens suffer lower self-esteem and more depression when they don't get enough sleep. That finding comes from a three-year study of 2,259 middle school students.

The study, led by University of Massachusetts psychology professor Jean Rhodes, PhD, appears in the January/February issue of Child Development.

"It is not just that decreases in sleep predict more depression and less self-esteem," Rhodes tells WebMD. "Increases in sleep predict less depression and more self-esteem."

Teen Moodiness Explained

Teens' famous moodiness isn't a fact of life. It's the result of too little sleep, Rhodes finds.

"We think that mood disorder in teens is inevitable -- like a 1-year-old losing her teeth -- yet it might not have to happen," she says. "There are things we can do to improve the well-being of adolescents, and one of them is to make sure they get enough sleep."

Nothing could be more important, says Richard Simon Jr., MD, medical director of the Katheryn Severyns Dement sleep disorder center at St. Mary Medical Center, Walla Walla, Wash.

"Healthy kids are energetic, optimistic, and wonderful to be around when well rested," Simon says. "If you take the same kids and sleep-deprive them, it's like driving a car with the emergency brake on. Mood becomes sour, optimism declines, depression increases, reaction times decline. Throw in all the other problems teens deal with: Now you have a recipe for disaster."

Sleep Time Drops in Middle School

Simon says sleep research shows that teens actually need more sleep than younger children -- at least 8 1/2 hours a day. Yet Rhodes' data shows that kids actually get less and less sleep as they move through their middle-school years.

Rhodes' team collected data from thousands of kids at 23 Chicago-area schools. The kids filled out detailed questionnaires for three years in a row, beginning in sixth grade.

The findings:

• Hours of sleep dropped for both boys and girls.
• Girls started out sleeping more than boys, but ended up sleeping less than boys.
• As their hours of sleep per night dropped, kids reported less self-esteem and more symptoms of depression.