(PS3-32) Crossed-lagged Effects Between Sleep Quality and Psychopathology Among Adolescents with Histories of Early Adversity

Abstract Text: Childhood sleep difficulties are associated with increased risk for psychopathology (Quach et al., 2018; Bai et al., 2019; Tomaso et al., 2021). These associations have also been demonstrated for children with histories of early adversity (i.e., maltreatment, separation from primary caregivers), who are at heightened risk for both sleep and mental health concerns (Hash et al., 2020; Lee et al., 2024). Existing research has focused on the effects of sleep on externalizing behaviors (Hash et al., 2020; Evans et al., 2024), however, and less is known about the effects of sleep on internalizing behaviors in this population. Here, we examined the crossed-lagged effects between caregiver-reported sleep quality (i.e., sleep duration, night waking) and self-reported depression symptoms in adolescents ages 13-15 years old with histories of early adversity. Given prior meta-analytic evidence of the prospective effects of sleep disturbance on depression (Lovato & Gradisar, 2014), we hypothesized cross-lagged effects of sleep quality on depressive symptoms but not vice versa.

Data were drawn from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a parenting intervention for Child Protective Services-involved infants and their caregivers. Follow-up data were obtained at ages 13, 14, and 15. Only children and their caregivers who completed at least one follow-up assessment were included in the current study. Participants included 207 children (52% male) and their primary caregivers (146 with CPS involvement, 61 without). At each time point, caregivers reported on their children's sleep over a three-day period using a sleep diary, and children reported their depressive symptoms using the Children's Depression Inventory (Kovacs, 2011). We estimated a cross-lagged panel model of sleep duration, nighttime waking, and depression symptoms across ages 13, 14, and 15, controlling for CPS involvement and sex. The model provided a good fit to the data, RMSEA = .03, CFI = .99, TLI = .96, SRMR = .09. Accounting for autoregressive effects of each variable across time, findings revealed statistically significant cross-lagged effects between age 13 sleep duration and age 14 night waking, B = -0.06, 95% CI [-0.11, -0.01], p =.031, and between age 14 night waking and age 15 depressive symptoms, B = 2.48, 95% CI [0.42, 4.55], p = .018. No other cross-lagged effects between the sleep variables and depressive symptoms were statistically significant. Consistent with prior research with community samples, findings suggest that sleep disruption in adolescence is linked with later depressive symptoms. Intervention aimed at facilitating healthy sleeping patterns in adolescence may be one strategy to reduce depressive symptoms among youth with histories of early adversity.