Evening types (“night owls”) take longer to fall asleep, especially those with a history of depression, potentially increasing their risk for future depressive episodes. This sheds light on the relationship between being an evening person and experiencing longer delays in falling asleep.

I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ejn.16551

Evening types take longer to fall asleep, especially those with a history of depression, study finds

A new study published in the European Journal of Neuroscience sheds light on the relationship between being an evening person and experiencing longer delays in falling asleep. The study confirmed that individuals who are naturally inclined to stay up late take more time to fall asleep compared to morning types. Individuals with a history of depression showed even longer delays in falling asleep if they identified as evening types, potentially increasing their risk for future depressive episodes.

The study found that evening types took significantly longer to fall asleep than morning types, a pattern confirmed by both self-reported data and actigraphy. On average, evening types took about 21 minutes to fall asleep according to the actigraph, compared to just 14 minutes for morning types. The same difference was observed in participants’ self-reports, with evening types reporting longer delays in falling asleep than morning types. These findings suggest that evening types experience real, measurable difficulties with sleep onset, rather than simply perceiving their sleep as more disrupted.

However, contrary to what the researchers expected, pre-sleep rumination did not explain why evening types took longer to fall asleep. While higher rumination levels were associated with longer delays in falling asleep, they did not differ significantly between evening and morning types. This suggests that other factors, beyond pre-sleep rumination, might be responsible for the longer sleep onset seen in evening types.

One of the most striking findings of the study was that a history of depression made the sleep difficulties of evening types even worse. Evening types with a history of depression reported much longer delays in falling asleep than both healthy evening types and morning types. This was true even after accounting for factors like alcohol consumption.

Thanks. We (night owls) know this already.