Understanding the link between adolescents’ body clocks and low mood

During adolescence, teenagers experience a shift in their body clock towards sleeping and waking later. This may cause their body clock to be out of sync with the natural cycle of day and night, known as ‘circadian misalignment’.

Adolescence is also a time in life when people develop mental health problems, including depression. It is not known whether a shift in the body clock causes depression or whether depression causes a shift in the body clock, but it is likely they affect each other.

It is also not clear whether it is better to:

• Try to stabilise adolescents’ body clocks, for example by increasing the amount of light they are exposed to in the mornings
• Accommodate adolescents’ sleeping and waking cycles, for example by starting schools later in the mornings

Project aims

We want to find out how circadian misalignment can lead to adolescents experiencing low mood. The aim of this project is to plan and gather background information for this future study.

This will include:

• Investigating what research is needed on this topic
• Working with adolescents and their parents to understand their priorities and needs, including:
  • What affects their sleep and circadian rhythms
  • Whether transitioning from school holidays to term time is an important problem for them
  • Whether particular groups of people are at risk
• Exploring how feasible it is to measure adolescents’ circadian hormones, the timing of their sleep and their depression symptoms

What we hope to achieve

The findings from this project will allow us to design future research to understand how circadian misalignment can lead to teenagers experiencing low mood. We hope this project will lead to a successful fellowship application to undertake the next stage of the research.

The long-term goal of this work is to develop an intervention to improve sleep and prevent depression in adolescents.