Barber Charmaine, Hetrick Sarah, Edmonds Liza, Taylor Rachel, Alansari Mohamed, Oldehaver Jacinta, Signal Leigh, Haszard Jillian, Galland Barbara
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Women's & Children's Health, University of Otago, Dunedin.
Associate Professor in Youth Mental Health, Department of Psychological Medicine, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, Waipapa Taumata Rau, Auckland, and A Better Start E Tipu E Rea National Science Challenge.
N Z Med J. 2022 Jan 20;136(1568):98-104. doi: 10.26635/6965.6019.
The under-acknowledged malleability of secondary school start times may be a lever towards addressing poor sleep, particularly the sleep deprivation that many adolescents living in Aotearoa New Zealand experience on a daily basis. Scrutinising morning school start times has not been prioritised in terms of a logical, modifiable way to counteract sleep deprivation in adolescents in Aotearoa. Importantly, later start times align with adolescents' natural sleep-wake biology that shifts at puberty to favour later bedtimes, meaning they naturally need to wake later in the morning. In this viewpoint we argue that a later school start time (no earlier than 9:45 am) every day for senior secondary school students is an attractive, non-stigmatising approach to address adolescent sleep. Increased sleep also has the potential to favourably impact multiple areas of adolescents' health and wellbeing, as well as school success. In fact, we argue that later school start times are a public health imperative to address the sleep and mental health issues faced by youth in Aotearoa today.
中学上课时间未得到充分认识的可塑性，可能是解决睡眠不佳问题的一个手段，尤其是解决许多生活在新西兰奥特亚罗瓦的青少年每天面临的睡眠不足问题。在新西兰奥特亚罗瓦，从逻辑上可修改的方式来应对青少年睡眠不足方面，审视学校上午上课时间尚未被列为优先事项。重要的是，上课时间推迟符合青少年自然的睡眠-觉醒生物钟，这种生物钟在青春期会发生变化，倾向于更晚的就寝时间，这意味着他们自然需要在早上更晚起床。在这一观点中，我们认为，高中学生每天上课时间推迟（不早于上午9:45）是解决青少年睡眠问题的一种有吸引力且不会带来污名化的方法。增加睡眠还有可能对青少年健康和幸福的多个方面以及学业成绩产生积极影响。事实上，我们认为，推迟学校上课时间是解决当今新西兰奥特亚罗瓦青少年面临的睡眠和心理健康问题的一项公共卫生要务。
