Possible Insomnia Predicts Some Risky Behaviors Among Adolescents When Controlling for Depressive Symptoms

This study investigated whether previously reported links between sleep and risk taking among adolescents (E. M. O’Brien & J. A. Mindell, 2005 O’Brien, E. M. and Mindell, J. A. 2005. Sleep and risk-taking behavior in adolescents. Behavioral Sleep Medicine, 3: 113–133. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) are associated—concurrently, longitudinally, or both—with sleep or underlying depression. The present study analyzed data from a nationally representative sample of 4,353 adolescents in the United States who had participated in Waves I and II of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (J. R. Udry, 1998 Udry, J. R. 1998. “The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), Waves I & II, 1994–1996 (Data sets 48–50, 98, A1–A3, documentation produced”. In [Machine-readable data file and documentation], Edited by: Kelley, M. and Peterson, J. Chapel Hill, NC: Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Producer). Los Altos, CA: Sociometrics Corporation, American Family Data [Google Scholar]). In the present study, grade, gender, depressive symptoms, and possible insomnia served as predictor variables to calculate the odds ratios for 4 categories of risky behaviors. After the authors accounted for other predictors, possible insomnia significantly predicted smoking, delinquency (within each wave but not longitudinally), and drinking and driving (Wave II and longitudinally). Possible insomnia may contribute to some types of risky behaviors over the effects of depressive symptoms.