Can Waking Earlier Help With Depression?
Waking up just one hour earlier could reduce a person’s risk of major depression by 23%, suggests a sweeping new genetic study published May 26 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. The study of 840,000 people, by researchers at University of Colorado Boulder and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, represents some of the strongest evidence yet that chronotype — a person’s propensity to sleep at a certain time — influences depression risk.
It’s also among the first studies to quantify just how much, or little, change is required to influence mental health. As people emerge, post-pandemic, from working and attending school remotely — a trend that has led many to shift to a later sleep schedule — the findings could have important implications.
Excepted from Science Daily
