Objective: Assess the number of depressive symptoms exhibited in adolescents with regards to the average length of sleep obtained while accounting for potential risk factors, including relationships with friends and sibling-family connectedness. Design: Secondary cross-sectional analysis of the Addhealth Study data.Measurements: Regression analyses were run for the overall study population, as well as three sleep subgroups, by regressing the depressive symptom scale scores on sleep category (in the primary analysis), and potential related covariates. Sleep subgroups included less than optimal sleep (less than seven hours), optimal sleep (seven to 10 hours), and more than optimal sleep (more than 10 hours).Results: Results showed that obtaining less than optimal sleep, when compared to optimal sleep, was significantly related to higher depressive symptom scale scores. Gender, sibling closeness scores and number of close friends were all significantly related to depressive symptom scale scores in the general population and optimal sleep subgroup. Conclusions: Results support that amount of sleep, sibling closeness and number of friends are factors related to the expression of depressive symptoms in adolescents.
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