Our research project aims to investigate the relationship between sleep regularity and mental health outcomes, particularly depression, anxiety, and suicide. We know that disrupted sleep patterns are linked to mental health issues, but understanding how irregular sleep affects these conditions is still unclear. Sleep isn’t just about how many hours you get, but also about when you sleep and how regular your sleep patterns are. Previous studies have shown that irregular sleep can be a risk factor for depression and other mental health problems. For example, people with more varied sleep patterns tend to have more severe depressive symptoms. Even subtle changes in sleep timing can have an impact, as seen in young adults where irregular sleep timing was found to predict suicidal thoughts better than depressive symptoms alone. To investigate this further, we’ll use data from the UK Biobank, which collected information from over 100,000 participants using wrist-worn accelerometers to track their sleep patterns. We’ll calculate a Sleep Regularity Index (SRI) to measure how consistent someone’s sleep is. Then, we’ll look at their mental health outcomes using different methods, including online questionnaires and hospital records. By analysing this data, we hope to better understand how sleep regularity affects mental health. This could lead to improvements in how we prevent, diagnose, and treat conditions like depression and anxiety. Ultimately, our findings could help reduce the global burden of mental illness. Our project will last from the time participants were monitored with accelerometers (2013-2015) until the end of follow-up in January 2022. We’ll also consider other factors that could influence our results, such as age, gender, socioeconomic status, physical activity levels, and medical history.
