Sleep Variability and Geriatric Depression

Abstract

There are many studies documenting the positive association between depression and poor sleep. Most of this research, however, focuses on middle-aged or younger participants. The present study examined baseline data from a multi-site sleep study involving older adult participants (aged 60-80) to investigate the effects of variable sleeping patterns on depression in this population, using 14 days of sleep diaries and the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) 30. Using reference data provided Suh, Nowakowski, Bernert, Ong, Siebern, Dowdle, and Manber, (2012) as a standard, I calculated night-to-night variability by means of the nightly sleep diaries from 52 participants, and then examined the correlation between this variability score and mood disturbance symptoms using scores on the GDS of above 9 and above 11. No association was found between depression and sleep patterns in older adults, though this may be attributed to older adults mostly being "morning-type" people.