This undated file photo shows students sleeping during class at a South Korean school. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, July 2 (Korea Bizwire) — Teenagers who stay up late at night are much more likely to suffer from depression compared to early birds, according to a recent study.
Night owl refers to those who go to bed late and wake up late, while early birds prefer getting up and going to bed early.
The study was conducted by a research team led by Koo Dae-lim, professor of neurology at the Seoul Metropolitan Government-Seoul National University Boramae Medical Center with the participation of 8,565 South Korean high school students.
The research team compared and analyzed the correlation between the subjects’ sleep patterns and the risk of depression using the morningness–eveningness questionnaire (MEQ) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) methods.
The researchers found that teenagers who went to bed late and woke up late were 1.7 times more likely to suffer from depression compared to those who went to bed early and got up early.
As part of the study’s methodology, the pattern of “going to bed at 11 p.m. and waking up between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m.” was classified as a normal pattern.
Teenagers who went to bed two or three hours later than the normal pattern were classified as night owls, while those who went to bed earlier were classified as early birds.
The study also found that the risk of depression for teenagers who slept more than two hours longer than usual on the weekend to compensate for a lack of sleep during the week was far lower than those who did not sleep more on the weekend.
The research team concluded that sufficient sleep has some effect in preventing the onset of depression among teenagers.
J. S. Shin (js_shin@koreabizwire.com)
