A new study from Brunel University of London investigated how being a night owl or lark impacts the mental health of young adults living in the UK and Germany – and discovered how good quality sleep can mitigate the risk of poor mental health regardless of a person’s preferred sleeping times.
“Chronotype is a person’s natural sleep pattern with regards to the time of day that they prefer to sleep and wake up, and when they are most alert,” explained Prof Veena Kumari, a psychology professor from Brunel University of London’s Centre for Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience, who led the study. “Morning chronotype people tend to report peak physical and mental performance in the early part of the day after waking up, and evening chronotype people might have the best mental and physical performance before sleeping,” she added. “Most people are in the intermediate range and have an intermediate chronotype – falling somewhere between a morning person (lark) and an evening person (night owl).”
Prof Kumari explained that there is considerable evidence supporting an increased risk of mental health problems in people with evening chronotypes compared to those with morning or intermediate chronotypes, and her research team investigated whether this risk may be explained, at least partially, by poor sleep quality.
The study involved 460 healthy adults aged 18 to 40 living in the UK and Germany. The participants answered a series of questionnaires for the researchers to identify their chronotype and assess specific mental health outcomes – depression, anxiety and stress, as well as sleep quality, certain personality traits and childhood trauma, which have been associated with poor mental health.
“Our study aimed to further clarify the roles of chronotype and sleep quality in specific mental health outcomes, and we found that poor-quality sleep had significantly positive associations with adverse mental health outcomes in all participants, regardless of their chronotype,” explained Dr Satyam Chauhan, an early career researcher from Brunel, who also worked on the study, along with psychologists Prof Ulrich Ettinger and Dr Kaja Fabender from the University of Bonn.
“Although we found significant associations between evening chronotype and poor mental health, our observations suggest that efforts to identify sleep disruption in a timely manner and promotion of good sleep may prevent mental health problems, especially in individuals with evening chronotype and other known risks for mental disorders,” added Prof Kumari.
‘Sleep Matters in Chronotype and Mental Health Association: Evidence from the UK and Germany’, by Satyam Chauhan, Kaja Fabender, Rakesh Pandey, Ray Norbury, Ulrich Ettinger and Veena Kumari, is published in Brain Sciences.
Reported by:
Nadine Palmer,
Media Relations
+44 (0)1895 267090
nadine.palmer@brunel.ac.uk