Association between Sleep Duration and Depression among the Elderly Population in China.

OBJECTIVES

The objective of this study was to understand how sleep duration could affect depression among elderly in China.

METHOD

A total of 7103 individuals aged 60 and older were selected from China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. A generalized linear mixed-effects model was used to estimate the relationship between sleep duration and depression, and we performed stratified analyses by age: young-old elderly, old-old elderly and oldest-old elderly.

RESULTS

Short sleep duration significantly incresased CES-D10 depression scores. In addition, the participants with middle sleep duration had higher CES-D10 scores compared to the participants with long sleep duration among young-old elderly, and we found that middle sleep duration was not significantly different from CES-D10 scores after adjustment for demographics, frequencies of activities and Chronic diseases.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings suggested that there was a complex association between depression and sleep duration among elderly in China. Different from previous research results on the middle or normal sleep time of the elderly, the middle sleep duration maybe not optimal sleep duration in this study. Investigation of sleep extension to prevent depression may be warranted among the elderly.