LAUSR

The relationship between sleep disruption and depressive symptoms is well established. Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is commonly associated with emotional dysregulation and decreased sleep quality. Less is known about the course of mTBI and its association with mood symptoms over time. We hypothesized that those in acute stages of mTBI (2W; 1M) would significantly differ in sleep quality and depressive symptoms compared with healthy controls. As there are often sex differences in sleep and depression, we focused here exclusively on males with mTBI. This study included 56 healthy males, split into six groups. The sample included 15 healthy males (Mage=23.67, SD=5.066) and 41 males (Mage=26.88, SD=8.509) with mTBI, at differing stages post-injury: 2 weeks and 1, 3, 6, and 12 months. Participants completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and the Beck Depression Index (BDI-II) to assess sleep disturbance and mood, respectively. Higher scores on both measures indicate a more severe presentation of disruptive symptoms. We conducted a one-way ANOVA to examine how the mean score for both measures varied at each time point. Compared to healthy controls there was no significant variance in average depression scores at 2W, 1M, 6M, and 12M (p>.05). However, at 3M post-mTBI males reported significantly higher depression scores than healthy controls M =9.8, SD=9.48, p=.035. Participants with mTBI reported greater sleep disruption when compared to healthy controls at 3M M =7.30, SD=3.16, p=.035 and 12M M=7.0, SD=3.39, p=.037, but not at other time points. Contrary to our hypotheses, we found that males did not significantly vary from healthy controls for either measure in the acute stages of mTBI. These results indicate that males may not initially present depressive symptoms and sleep disruption post-mTBI, which could result in an inaccurate assessment of injury severity and an improper treatment plan moving forward in recovery. Further research conducted with a larger sample size would be useful in establishing that males suffering from mTBI experience the most severe presentation of symptoms roughly 3M after injury. Future work will need to examine whether these same trends are present among females. W81XWH-12-1-0386