Coaching on a steady sleep routine made teens' sleep times far more regular
Who it’s about: Children, Students, People with a health condition
- Helped
Teens coached to wake at a fixed time, get morning light and cut evening screens got much steadier sleep times.
- Action: Get daylight in the morningtested
- Rule: At the same time every daytested
- Rule: Keep weekends within an hour of weekdaystested
- Action: Get upused
- Rule: In weekly sessionsused
- Rule: With a coach or therapistused
Small randomised trial of 57 anxious, depressed teenagers in Pakistan · vs weekly therapy on unhelpful thoughts, same length · behaviour was recorded · ⚠ only counted people who finished; results look too good to be true
The study
Who took part
60 teenagers aged 14 to 18 in Pakistan, about 16 on average, and 57 of them finished. All had anxiety, low mood and sleep times that had been irregular for at least three months.
What they did
For eight weeks, one group had weekly sessions on waking at a fixed time and going to bed at a steady time. They also worked on cutting evening screens, getting morning light and planning their days. They kept a daily sleep diary and wore a wrist sleep tracker. The other group had weekly therapy that challenges unhelpful thoughts for the same eight weeks.
What happened
After eight weeks, the day-to-day swing in sleep times fell by about 1 hour 50 minutes in the routine group. In the therapy group it fell by about 35 minutes. That gap is unusually large for a study like this. The paper does not say whether the hours came from the diaries or the trackers, and nobody was checked later.
Source
A Trial Testing Whether Targeted Sleep-Wake Rhythm Stabilization Outperforms Cognitive Therapy for Adolescent Anxiety Comorbid with Depression (2026)
DOI: 10.61919/w2gr0d77 (opens in a new tab)
