Associations between adolescents’ sleep duration, sleep satisfaction, and suicidal ideation

Abstract

Introduction. Both sleep and suicide are important issues among adolescents. Despite the extensive literature explaining short sleep duration as an important suicide risk factor, most previous studies did not consider sleep quality.

Objective. This study identified associations between sleep duration, sleep satisfaction, and suicidal ideation in adolescents.

Method. This cross-sectional study analyzed 58 848 adolescents using raw data from the tenth Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey conducted by Korea’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Analyses incorporated sampling weights to account for the complex sampling design.

Results. In multivariate analysis, suicidal ideation of participants sleeping less than four hours was 1.36 times higher than that of participants sleeping more than nine hours. Sleep satisfaction was 1.20 times higher when moderate, 1.38 times higher when dissatisfied, and 1.64 times higher when very dissatisfied than when very satisfied.

Discussion and conclusion. It is necessary not only to improve sleep quality, but also to extend sleep duration in order to prevent adolescent suicide. If it is actually difficult to extend sleep duration due to school, a plan to increase subjective sleep satisfaction by improving sleep quality is required. This study showed the association between sleep duration and sleep satisfaction in adolescents. Therefore, in order to prevent adolescent suicide, it is necessary not only to extend their sleep duration, but also to improve their sleep quality.