A genetic study found that getting up early and delaying sleep time by just an hourRisk of severe depressionreduced by 23 percent. The results provide the strongest evidence that chronotype, or a person's tendency to sleep at a given time, influences depression risk. This research also quantifies what lifestyle changes are needed to impact mental health.
How getting up early can affect your mental health
If people are working at home and not going to school during the pandemic, this routine can have serious psychological impacts. This trend has now led many people to switch to a later sleep schedule. The study authors found that getting up even an hour earlier is associated with a significantly lower risk of depression. Previous research shows that night owls are twice as likely as early risers to suffer from depression, regardless of how long they sleep. However, because mood disorders themselves can disrupt sleep patterns, researchers found it difficult to decipher what leads to such conditions. The team therefore used a method called “Mendelian randomization,” which uses genetic associations to decipher cause and effect. The researchers evaluated genetic data from up to 850,000 people. This gave them a more detailed picture, down to the hour, of how variants in genes affect when people sleep and wake up.
Every previous sleep midway pointbetween bedtimeand awake time corresponded to a 23% lower risk of major depression. This suggests that getting up early and going to sleep for the same length of sleep could reduce the risk of depression by 23%. If people went to bed or woke up even earlier, they could actually reduce it by about 40%.
However, the research doesn't indicate whether those who are already early risers might benefit from getting up even earlier. So for those in the middle or evening range, it would probably be helpful to switch to an earlier bedtime.This studydefinitely shifts the weight of evidence toward supporting a causal effect of sleep timing on depression.
