Patterns of sleep disturbances and associations with depressive symptoms in autistic young adults.
Linnea A Lampinen, Shuting Zheng, Julie Lounds Taylor and 4 others
PMID 36082844WHAT IT FOUND
In 304 autistic young adults, low sleep efficiency and delayed sleep phase linked to higher depression scores.
Total sleep time did not. Assess how well patients sleep and when they fall asleep, not just how many hours they get.
Key findings
01Lower sleep efficiency and delayed sleep phase were significantly associated with higher depressive symptoms, even after controlling for age, employment, school, gender, relationship status, and parenting status.
02Total sleep time was not significantly associated with depressive symptoms.
03Follow-up analysis showed that both sleep latency (time to fall asleep) and wake after sleep onset (time awake after falling asleep) contributed to the association between poor sleep efficiency and depressive symptoms.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The study is cross-sectional, so it cannot determine if sleep problems cause depression or if depression causes sleep problems. Sleep data was self-reported via a questionnaire about the past week, which may miss daily variability and can lead to overestimation of sleep time compared to objective measures. Circadian phase was classified based only on self-reported sleep onset time, not on clinical diagnosis, actigraphy, or biological markers, so rates of delayed sleep phase may not reflect actual clinical prevalence. The sample was drawn from a specific registry (SPARK) of legally independent adults, which may not represent all autistic adults, particularly those with intellectual disability or who are not legally independent. Time in bed after waking was not included in the sleep efficiency calculation, potentially overestimating sleep efficiency.
Declared interests
The study was supported by grants from the Simons Foundation and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The authors declared no competing financial interests.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that increasing total sleep time will reduce depressive symptoms in this population. The study found that total sleep time was not significantly associated with depression, while sleep efficiency and delayed sleep phase were. Focusing solely on hours slept may miss the actual drivers of distress.