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People with irregular sleep-wake schedules may experience more severe symptoms of anxiety, depression and even loneliness, according to a large study led by UC San Francisco and UC San Diego.

Although prior sleep research has largely focused on sleep duration and sleep quality, this study examined sleep regularity—how consistently people followed the same sleep-wake patterns each day—using months of data from wearables.

"Regular sleep and wake times help keep circadian rhythms aligned," said senior author Ashley Mason of the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. "Irregular sleep-wake timing may weaken circadian alignment, which is associated with depression and other mental health disorders."

Irregular sleep schedules can also disrupt the timing of light exposure, meals, exercise and social activity, all of which help regulate the circadian rhythm, noted Mason, who is also affiliated with the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Health.

In this study, researchers analyzed data from approximately 23,000 participants who were enrolled in TemPredict, a study launched in 2020 to investigate whether data from wearables could help identify COVID-19 before people recognized symptoms.

Participants contributed an average of 154 days of sleep data, which allowed researchers to examine sleep regularity over time. The researchers also created a "typical week" snapshot to compare their findings with previous, much shorter studies on sleep regularity. They discovered that associations between sleep and mental health were stronger with the longer-term data.

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