Too little or too much: nonlinear relationship between sleep duration and daily affective well-being in depressed adults

Sun Ah Lee; Dahlia Mukherjee; Jonathan Rush; Soomi Lee; David M Almeida

doi:10.1186/s12888-024-05747-7

Too little or too much: nonlinear relationship between sleep duration and daily affective well-being in depressed adults

BMC Psychiatry. 2024 Apr 25;24(1):323. doi: 10.1186/s12888-024-05747-7.

Authors

Sun Ah Lee^{1

2}, Dahlia Mukherjee³, Jonathan Rush⁴, Soomi Lee^{5

6}, David M Almeida^{5

6}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Human Development and Family Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA. sbl5704@psu.edu.
² Center for Healthy Aging, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA. sbl5704@psu.edu.
³ Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health, Penn State College of Medicine and Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, PA, USA.
⁴ Department of Psychology, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.
⁵ Department of Human Development and Family Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
⁶ Center for Healthy Aging, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.

Abstract

Background: In addition to having higher negative affect and lower positive affect overall, depressed individuals exhibit heightened affective reactivity to external stimuli than non-depressed individuals. Sleep may contribute to day-to-day fluctuations in depressed individuals, given that sleep disturbance is a common symptom of depression. Yet, little is known about changes in daily affect as a function of nightly sleep duration in depressed adults and non-depressed adults. The current study examined whether and how naturally-occurring sleep duration is associated with negative and positive affect, and how these associations differ between depressed vs. non-depressed adults.

Methods: Data were drawn from the second wave of the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE), a daily diary project of the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study. The sample of 2,012 adults (M_age=56.5; 57% female; 84% white) completed eight-day diary interviews via telephone on their daily experiences including nightly sleep duration and negative and positive affect. They also completed assessments of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview-Short form, and depressed status was determined based on DSM-III. Multilevel regression models with linear, quadratic, and cubic terms of sleep duration examined the nonlinear relationship between nightly sleep duration and daily affect. Interaction terms with depression status were added to examine differences between depressed and non-depressed adults.

Results: Depressed adults exhibited significant and greater fluctuations in daily affect as a function of nightly sleep duration than non-depressed adults. Specifically, the degree of decrease in positive affect and increase in negative affect was greater when depressed adults slept 2 or more hours less or longer than their usual sleep hours. Non-depressed adults exhibited relatively stable daily affect regardless of their nightly sleep hours.

Conclusions: Sleep duration is nonlinearly associated with affect in daily lives of depressed adults, highlighting that both having too little sleep and excessive sleep are associated with adverse daily affective well-being. Implementing sleep interventions to promote an appropriate sleep duration may help improve daily affect among depressed adults.

Keywords: Affect; Daily diary design; Depression; Major depressive disorder; Sleep.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

Adult
Affect* / physiology
Aged
Depression* / psychology
Female
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Sleep Duration
Sleep Wake Disorders / psychology
Sleep* / physiology
Time Factors
United States

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding