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Updated: Aug 5, 2026
Association Between Sleep Quality and Cognitive Symptoms in Patients with Major Depressive Disorder
Published on: April 26, 2024
Dynamic association between sleep duration and depressive symptoms in middle-aged and older Chinese population: A
Yuqing Lv1, Nana Wang1, Xiaocan Jia1
1Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, College of Public Health, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, 450001, Henan, China.
Background:
The temporal directional relationship between sleep duration and depressive symptoms remains unclear. This study explored their dynamic links among middle-aged and older Chinese adults using a panel vector autoregressive framework.
Methods:
We used nationally representative longitudinal data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS, 2011-2020). Analyses included participants with ≥3 repeated measurements of sleep duration and depressive symptoms to compute inter-wave change scores. Sleep duration was self-report. Depressive symptoms were measured by the 10-item CES-D scale. A panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) model was applied to examine the dynamic bidirectional association between sleep duration and depressive symptoms across multiple survey waves.
Results:
12,747 participants were included in this study. An initial change in sleep duration was negatively associated with subsequent changes in sleep duration (β= -0.340, 95% CI: -0.358, -0.322). Similarly, an initial change in depressive symptoms was associated with subsequent reductions in depressive symptoms (β = -0.329, 95% CI: -0.346, -0.311). No significant association was observed between initial changes in depressive symptoms and subsequent changes in sleep duration (β = -0.001, 95% CI: -0.007, 0.005). In contrast, longer sleep duration significantly showed a directional lagged association with subsequent reductions in depressive symptoms (β = -0.064, 95% CI: -0.110, -0.018).
Conclusions:
Sleep duration was associated with lower subsequent depressive symptoms, while depressive symptoms did not predict sleep duration. These results indicate a directional temporal association and suggest that sleep duration may be a potential intervention target for improving mental health in middle-aged and older adults.
