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MEDIA CONTACT: Megan Fellman at (847) 491-3115 or fellman@northwestern.edu
April 29, 2002
Teen Sleep Deprivation May Affect Behavior, Academics
EVANSTON, Ill. — Research has clarified what most parents
already know about the sleep patterns of adolescents —
they seem to have an unlimited capacity to sleep late on weekends.
In a study presented April 18 at the Annual Meeting of the
American Academy of Neurology, Northwestern University researchers
propose that teenagers need more sleep than they may be getting,
and that sleeping late on weekends may be a result of relative
sleep deprivation during the week.
"Previous research has indicated that sleep-wake habits
of teenagers vary from those of adults and younger children,
and that many adolescents experience chronic partial sleep
deprivation," said study author Kathryn Reid, a research
assistant professor at Northwestern’s Center for Sleep
and Circadian Biology. "We found that teenagers sleep,
on average, 8.5 hours during the week and more than 9.5 hours
on weekends."
Reid and colleagues studied 729 young people aged 12 to
17, who were admitted to the Cook County Juvenile Temporary
Detention Center. They found that, while onset of sleep/waking
times were later among older teens, a longer duration was
consistent among all subjects compared to previous data. Nearly
half of the study subjects reported significant daytime sleepiness.
Other research has suggested that in this age group, sleep
deprivation may play a role in lower grades and with behavioral
problems. Changing school start times to later has been shown
to improve attendance in this age group. The later wake times
of the older teenagers in the current study further suggests
that there may benefit to starting school later. However,
this is a complex issue that needs to be studied further.
It is likely that further analysis of sleep data from this
study may reveal actual relationships between sleep times
and other measures of mental health, academic performance
and behavior.
The study was sponsored by the National Institute of Mental
Health.
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