Are you a night owl? It may be hurting your mental health

July 08, 2024

In a new, large scale study of sleep behavior from Stanford Medicine scientists, it was found that being a night owl may be detrimental to your mental health.

According to a recent article published on med.stanford.edu, no matter what your preferred sleep timing is—also called your chronotype—everyone benefits from going to bed earlier rather than later. 

Scientists studied roughly 75,000 middle and older aged adults in the United Kingdom. The participants were surveyed about their sleep habits and morning and evening preferences. They wore activity monitors and tracked their sleep for a week. Their mental health was determined based on their health records, which included mental or behavioral disorders. 

Participants were asked to rank themselves as early, middle, or late sleepers, and when scientists analyzed the data, they were surprised by the results. They found aligning with one’s chronotype was bit the best choice for everyone’s health, which went against existing data that living aligned to your chronotype was very important.

“I thought, ‘Let’s try to disprove it, because this doesn’t make any sense,’” Jamie Zeitzer, PhD and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences recalled. “We spent six months trying to disprove it, and we couldn’t.”

The study results are clear: both morning and evening types who went to sleep late had a higher rate of mental health disorders, including depression and anxiety. In fact, night owls were 20% to 40% more likely to be diagnosed with a mental health disorder compared to self proclaimed night owls who kept to an earlier bedtime schedule. 

Curious which group had the best mental health? Morning people who woke up early had the best mental health of all. So, f you find yourself staying up late and struggling with your own mental health, it may be worth trying to head to bed earlier. 

Need some help falling or staying asleep? Check out some of our recommendation here.

If you want to read more about the study, visit here.

---

Also in Blog