In the most comprehensive study of its kind, scientists have found that generally, the world feels brighter when you wake up – that people start the day in the best frame of mind in the morning, but end in the worst, at about midnight, with the day of the week and the season also playing a part.
Mental health is also more varied at weekends but steadier during the week, according to the study led by University College London and published in BMJ Mental Health.
Mental health and well-being are dynamic in nature, and subject to change over short and long periods. However, reports The Guardian, few studies have looked at how they might change over the course of the day, and those that have, tended to only look at particular, or very small, groups of people.
Scientists wanted to explore whether time of day was associated with variations in mental health, happiness, life satisfaction, sense of life being worthwhile and loneliness. They also wanted to find out if these associations varied by day, season or year.
They analysed data from the UCL Covid-19 social study, which began in March 2020, and involved regular monitoring until November 2021, and then additional monitoring up to March 2022.
This involved almost 1m survey responses from nearly 50 000 adults over two years.
People in the study answered questionnaires, with questions such as: “In the past week, how happy did you feel?”, “How satisfied have you been with your life?”, and “To what extent have you felt the things you are doing in your life are worthwhile?”
Factors such as age, health conditions and whether people worked were taken into account.
The results showed that happiness, life satisfaction, and worthwhile ratings were ajll higher on Mondays and Fridays than on Sundays, while happiness was also higher on Tuesdays. There was no evidence that loneliness differed across days of the week.
There was clear evidence of a seasonal influence on mood. Compared with winter, people tended to have lower levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms and loneliness, and higher levels of happiness, life satisfaction and feeling that life was worthwhile in the three other seasons.
Mental health was best in the summer across all outcomes. But the season didn’t affect the associations observed across the day, however.
This was an observational study, so cannot establish cause. When people chose to fill in their questionnaires may have influenced the findings, the researchers said, adding that no information was available for sleep cycles, latitude or weather, all of which may also have been influential.
But the changes in mental health and well-being across the day might be explained by the physiological changes associated with the body clock, they suggested.
“For example, cortisol peaks shortly after waking and reaches its lowest levels around bedtime,” they said.
However, they said the differences between weekdays and weekends may be driven by things such as the sequence of daily activities, which are likely to be different between weekends and weekdays.
Dr Feifei Bu, from UCL’s department of behavioural science and health, said: “Our findings suggest that on average, people’s mental health and well-being are better in the morning and worst at midnight.
“We drew on a large sample of repeated data – nearly a million survey responses from 49 000 participants over two years.
“This pattern, though, could reflect when people choose to respond to the survey, rather than a direct effect of time of day. For example, those already feeling better in the morning might be more likely to engage with the survey at that time.
“While these findings are intriguing, they need to be replicated in other studies that fully account for this potential bias.
“If validated, this could have important practical implications. Researchers investigating people’s mental health and well-being should take into account the time of day people respond.
“Mental health support services might consider adjusting resources to match fluctuating needs across the day – for instance, prioritising late-night availability.”
Study details
Will things feel better in the morning? A time-of-day analysis of mental health and wellbeing from nearly 1 million observations
Feifei Bu, Jessica K Bone, Daisy Fancourt.
Published in BMJ Mental Health
Abstract
Background
Mood is known to change over seasons of the year, days of the week, and even over the course of the day (diurnally). But although broader mental health and well-being also vary over months and weeks, it is unclear whether there are diurnal changes in how people experience and report their mental health.
Objective
To assess time-of-day association with depression, anxiety, well-being and loneliness.
Methods
The study analysed data from 49 218 adults drawn from the University College London COVID-19 Social Study, which gathered detailed repeated measurements from the same participants across time over a 2-year period (March 2020–March 2022, 18.5 observation per person). Data were analysed using linear mixed-effects models.
Findings
There is a clear time-of-day pattern in self-reported mental health and well-being, with people generally waking up feeling best and feeling worst around midnight. There is also an association with day of the week and season, with particularly strong evidence for better mental health and well-being in the summer. Time-of-day patterns are moderated by day, with more variation in mental health and individual well-being during weekends compared with weekdays. Loneliness is relatively more stable.
Conclusions
Generally, things do seem better in the morning. Hedonic and eudemonic well-being have the most variation, and social well-being is most stable.
Clinical implications
Our findings indicate the importance of considering time, day and season in research design, analyses, intervention delivery, and the planning and provision of public health services.
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Losing touch: The mental health cost of isolation
Early to bed and early to rise linked to less depression risk