Is insufficient sleep duration associated with suicidal behavior in Korean adolescents?

Abstract

The second leading cause of death among Korean adolescents was suicide in 2014. We assessed the relationship between sleep duration and suicidal behavior (ideation, planning and attempt) using data from the Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey (KYRBS). KYRBS is an anonymous online survey in self-reporting format that investigates the health status of middle and high school students. Weekly sleep duration was divided into six groups (more than 8, 7–8, 6–7, 5–6, 4–5 h, less than 4 h). We compared the more-than-8-h group with others for sleep duration-associated suicidal behavior. Results showed that even though the confidence interval for the odds ratio for some sleep duration groups was not significant, there was a statistically significant inverse positive trend of suicidal behavior (ideation, planning and attempt) with the sleep duration groups (P value for trend ≤0.001). In conclusion, this study found that short average weekday sleep duration among Korean adolescents was associated with suicidal behavior independent of various confounding factors, which includes depressed mood.