Abstract:
Depression is one of the leading causes of global disease, (Kessler et al., 2005) and adolescents face a higher likelihood of diagnosis (Fleming and Offord, 1990). Because of its prevalence and recurrent nature (Pine et al., 1999), factors related to depression have been researched for many years. Sleep health is one of the many factors established to be a correlate of depressive disorders. While worse sleep is known to increase the risk of depressive symptomatology (Nutt, Wilson & Paterson, 2022), less is understood about the mechanisms that mediate this relationship. Connected to both sleep and depression are reward processes (Nestler & Carlezon, 2006; Shankman et al., 2007; Bress et al., 2012; Heshmati & Russo, 2015). One particular aspect of reward processing is reward motivation, or desire-driven action for a reward. Because depression rates in adolescent women are especially prevalent, finding risk factors and providing adequate intervention for symptom onset is a noble goal. My aim is to find the associations between sleep quality, depressive symptoms, and reward motivation. More specifically, I aim to determine if reward motivation mediates sleep quality and depression symptomatology. After screening criteria were met, data were collected from 120 adolescent girls. Of this sample, 65% were Black, 27% were White, and 8% were multi-racial (Casement et al., 2019). Through a series of linear regressions, I found nonsignificant relationships between the variables of depression, sleep quality, and hypothesized mediating factor of reward motivation. Results from this study aim to provide context for depression prevention and intervention and future research direction.