The role of sleep in the psychological functioning of adolescents

Adolescents’ sleep is related to psychological functioning. The present cumulative dissertation examined three main issues: First, whether parents’ sleep patterns are associated with their adolescent children’ sleep Patterns using objective assessment of sleep, and whether adolescents’ sleep is associated with their psychological well-being. Second, whether regular physical activity is associated with increased sleep quality and improved psychological functioning. Third, whether interrelations between sleep patterns and subjective psychological well-being persist across one year (three time points), testing for influences in both directions.
The main findings of the cumulative dissertation can be summarized as follows: First, our findings show for the first time the existence of relationships between adolescents’ objective and subjective sleep and well-being and parents’ objective and subjective sleep and well-being. These relationships were apparent regardless of whether subjective or objective sleep data were considered. The overall pattern of results strongly indicates that adolescent’ sleep and well-being and family functioning are related. Second, we could show that thirty minutes of running in the morning during weekday for 3 consecutive weeks impacted positively on objective and subjective sleep and psychological functioning in healthy adolescents compared with control subjects. Third, our findings suggest that sleep duration is predictive of subjective psychological well-being across 6 months.
To summarize, and based on our data, we can say, that sleep is important for adolescents and also for their parents because of the bi-directional interaction (Kalak et al., 2012). Adolescents should be encouraged to have regular moderate-to-vigorous exercise, even if only for 30 minutes a day, as this can improve their psychological functioning and their subjective and objective sleep quality (Kalak et al., 2012), while sufficient sleep duration has an effect on subjective well-being six months later (Kalak et al., 2014).