Oh god. I thought you of all people would be hip to the whole correlation/causation deal. Chances are that staying up longer was a symptom, not a cause.

ditto, what about the kids with DSPS Delayed sleep-phase syndrome? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome

Let me fill you in on what its like, you are constantly in troubled, told you're lazy, worthless, a f*ck up because you can't sleep and can't function during those early hours. The amount of punishment (which was abuse since no negative behavior was choosen) because I couldn't stay awake during schools early hours still fills me with rage several decades for later for how I was treated. The funny thing is once I got out from under the clock nazi's my work level kept me employed, The only thing that changed was the hours and suddenly it wasn't a struggle to function. I lived in hell.

Depressed, suicidal damm right I was miserable and the people who were supposed to help me kicked me around to try and make me be.... The logic was if they just punish me enough I suddenly fall in line to their time schedule, I really wish we were the major and the others got the crap we have to live through drag their asses out of bad at 11pm or 1 am and make them try to function and force them to sleep 11am-6pm type scheduling. Unresaonable? funny cause that what its like for us.

This story is so common amongst my friends for experiences its sad. all are able to be productive members of society and feel better about themselves and have a high quality of life if allowed to listen to their body. Most migrate into industries friendly to these hours that have second and thrid shifts.

....Of course the answer is drug them to sleep and jack them up with speed to function in the morning then drug them back down again. repeat daily taking a toll on their health and wallet...

More to it than that - teenage brains go through a lot of changes, and i dont mean in an emo way, but structurally. these changes, as well as processing information about your new place in the world, onlly cement themselves in the brain during sleep.

NiroZ wrote:
"...Chances are that staying up longer was a symptom, not a cause."

Or else completely unrelated, and merely coincidental... The piece cited doesn't mention numbers (7 is 40% more than 5, after all), so I'm struggling to lend much credibility to it. It (the piece), mentions the number of kids involved (some 15k), but everthing else is in percentages, and therefore relative, although what those percentages are relative to is not stated.

Anyway, it's all bollox: if one wants to know why somebody's "depressed," then ask them. It's not a mystery - after all, the only thing that one can ever truly "know" is one's own experience of oneself.

Matt

Nowhere in his post did he say that going to bed late CAUSES teenage depression. He was just a bit vague, if anything.

For what it's worth, I do notice a strong correlation between going to bed late on a regular basis and depression. Where the causation is I couldn't say.

This question has interested me for some time.

Does staying up late also mean sleeping in late, or a steady deprivation of sleep? I also wonder about what happens during these hours people are not sleeping. Are they in the dark or subjected to bright lights (computer screens, tv, etc). Are they drinking, reading, dancing, or what and does it matter?

I wonder what the long term effect is of subjecting the SCN to light when it expects darkness? I wonder what possible effects this might have on circadian driven processes. I'd expect some wacky effects on cortisol, thyroid and I wonder what this might mean to person sensitive in these areas. Is it different in adolescents than with adults and what of the elderly?

If the group that stayed up late now had a full night's sleep, is there a reduction in suicidal ideation and depression? I wonder if melatonin were shown to "normalize" wake/sleep patterns and this did lead to a reduction in suicidal ideation and depression would it be labeled as an anti-depressant or mood stabilizer?

Is it as simple as early to bed, early to rise?