“The Lost Hour”: Depression

Dropping Below Eight Hours of Sleep Doubled The Rate of Clinical-Level Depression

“University of Kentucky’s Danner has studied how, on a national level, sleep decreases each year during high school.  In their first year, 60% of kids got at least eight hours on average.  By the second year, that was down to 30%.  Right alongside this decline went their moods; dropping below eight hours doubled the rate of clinical-level depression.  Over one-eighth of the students reached this classification, which makes one only wonder how many more suffer from melancholy of a lesser degree.”

– Nurture Shock (2009) by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman; pages 36 – 37