Link between insomnia and hypersomnia, depression in kids

A new study has found that sleep-disturbed children are more severely depressed and experience more symptoms of depression and comorbid anxiety disorders compared with children without sleep disturbance.

The study, authored by Xianchen Liu, MD, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh, was conducted on 553 children with a depressive disorder. Out of this group, 72.7% had sleep disturbance, of which 53.5% had insomnia alone, 9% had hypersomnia alone and 10.1% had both disturbances. Girls with depressive symptoms were more likely to have disturbances during sleep than boys, but age played no substantial role in the outcome.

The study also found that across sleep-disturbed children, those with both insomnia and hypersomnia had a longer history of illness, were more severely depressed and were more likely to have anhedonia, weight loss, psychomotor retardation and fatigue than those with either insomnia or hypersomnia.

Liu said, “We know that depression is associated with sleep problems. But what this study shows is that, in depressed youths, not all sleep problems are the same. Insomnia is the most common problem, but having a combination of insomnia and sleepiness is ‘double trouble’. Youths having both of these had more severe depression than youths with just one sleep problem. This means that we should carefully ask depressed youths about the specific type of sleep problem they’re having. It may also mean that we should think about different treatments to specifically target an individual’s sleep problem.”

According to experts, young school-aged children need between 10-11 hours of sleep each night to achieve good health and optimum performance, while those in pre-school should get 11-13 hours a night.

The results of the study appear in the January 1, 2007 issue of the journal Sleep.

SOURCES: Liu X, University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA.

© Copyright 2007 Insight Journal Online Magazine.

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