LAUSR

Abstract Introduction Adolescence is a transitional life-stage accompanied by large biopsychosocial changes and greater psychophysiological vulnerability. Global events like the COVID-19 pandemic may increase vulnerability to depression and anxiety in this population. Poor sleep is often associated with depression, and both sleep and mood have been shown to be strongly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, with most studies focusing on adults. The current study investigates psychological distress in young adolescents during the pandemic, and specifically, whether poor sleep before the pandemic predicts psychological distress. Methods Self-report data were analyzed from 3099 adolescents (9-10 years at baseline) in the population-based, demographically diverse, Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study across three pre-pandemic annual visits and 3 monthly time points during the COVID-19 pandemic (ages 11-13 years). At each assessment, children and their guardians completed questionnaires including those about sleep, environment, and psychological wellbeing. Gradient Boosted Tree machine learning algorithms were used to identify the strongest predictors of pandemic-related psychological distress in individuals. We trained models using pre-pandemic sleep measures along with demographics, economic, and social measures during the pandemic. We evaluated the performance of the models using area under curve (AUC) metrics and interpreted the models by using the recently proposed SHapley Additive exPlanations methodology. Results Pandemic-related perceived stress, fear and sadness were accurately detected with our classifiers (AUC = 0.83 for perceived stress, AUC = 0.73 for fear, AUC = 0.79 for sadness). Across all models, shorter sleep duration, prolonged sleep onset latency, and longer time between waking and getting out of bed predicted greater distress. Moreover, female sex, and pandemic-related factors, including greater family conflict, fewer economic resources, and more screen time contributed to prediction performance in all three models. Conclusion Findings highlight the importance of addressing sleep problems and ensuring sufficient sleep duration in children to protect against the psychological impact of major life events, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Considering the long-lasting effects of sleep, it would be crucial to improve sleep health by targeted prevention, intervention and increased awareness among adolescents. Support (if any) NIH U01DA041022