Could sleep treatment be the key to addressing depression symptomology in autistic individuals? A study published in Autism Research suggests that sleep disturbances may be a cause of depression in autistic adults.
Autism has a high comorbidity with both depression and sleep problems. While the relationship between sleep disturbances and adverse mental health outcomes has been well-documented in a normative sample, it has not been studied with specific regard to individuals with autism. This is a significant gap in the literature, especially because of the aforementioned high comorbidities. This study seeks to bridge this gap and provide implications for potential new avenues of treatment for depression in an autistic population.
For their study, Linnea A. Lampinen and colleagues utilized 304 adults (18 to 35 years old) who had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder in childhood. The sample was recruited as part of a larger online study on depression. Participants completed self-report measures on depression, sleep behaviors from the past week, and demographic information.
Results showed that 86% of the sample experienced sleep disturbance in the week preceding the study. These issues included short total sleep time, poor sleep efficiency, and delayed sleep phase. The two latter disturbances were both found to be associated with an increase in depression symptomology.
Approximately a third of the participants sampled reported sleeping less than 7 hours a night, when the ideal amount of sleep for an adult is around 8 hours. These results show a potential new avenue for treating depressive symptoms in an adult autistic population by targeting the sleep disturbances, which have significant effects on the depression.
This study took important steps into better understanding sleep and depression in a sample of adults with autism spectrum disorder. Regardless, there are limitations to note. One such limitation is that they utilized self-report measures, which are vulnerable to bias and dishonesty. Additionally, the sleep questionnaire asked for an average of the past week; future research should utilize a daily sleep diary to get a more clear understanding of sleep patterns.
“Our findings suggest that a large proportion of autistic adults experience sleep disturbances, and lower sleep efficiency and delayed sleep phase are associated with increased depressive symptoms, even after controlling for demographic characteristics not considered in previous studies of individuals with ASD,” the researchers concluded. “Given the relationship between sleep and depressive symptoms shown by our findings, and previous treatment evidence in typically developing populations, sleep treatments may hold potential for ameliorating depressive symptoms in autistic adults.”
The study, “Patterns of sleep disturbances and associations with depressive symptoms in autistic young adults“, was authored by Linnea A. Lampinen, Shuting Zheng, Julie Lounds Taylor, Ryan E. Adams, Florencia Pezzimenti, Lauren D. Asarnow, and Somer L. Bishop.