TY - JOUR PY - 2021// TI - Sleep duration, depressive symptoms, and digital self-harm among adolescents JO - Child and adolescent mental health A1 - Semenza, Daniel C. A1 - Meldrum, Ryan C. A1 - Testa, Alexander A1 - Jackson, Dylan B. SP - ePub EP - ePub VL - ePub IS - ePub N2 - BACKGROUND: This study examines the relationship between sleep duration, depression, and engagement in a novel cyber behavior, digital self-harm, among adolescents.

METHOD: Logistic regression analyses were conducted using cross-sectional data from the 2019 Florida Youth Substance Abuse Survey (N = 9,819; 48% male; avg. grade level = 9th grade [SD = 1.9]) to analyze the association between sleep duration and digital self-harm. A Karlson-Holm-Breen (KHB) analysis was used to assess whether depressive symptoms attenuate this association.

RESULTS: Bivariate results indicated that longer sleep duration was associated with lower incidence of digital self-harm. Multivariate results showed that sleep duration was inversely associated with engaging in digital self-harm, net of all covariates. Depressive symptoms attenuated the influence of sleep duration on digital self-harm by 50.72%.

CONCLUSIONS: Both insufficient sleep and depressive symptoms were associated with engagement in digital self-harm among adolescents. Prospective research is needed, however, to confirm this pathway. Practitioners and clinicians should consider discussing digital self-harm with adolescents and parents, especially if adolescents are experiencing poor sleep and depressive symptoms.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 1475-357X UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/camh.12457 ID - ref1 ER -