Depression and sleep disturbance often co-occur, and both have been found to negatively impact cognitive functioning. This study aims to examine sleep as a potential mediator between depression and cognitive functioning in college athletes.
897 collegiate athletes (F = 230) completed a comprehensive neuropsychological battery including self-reported symptom measures. The Beck Depression Inventory-Fast Screen was used to measure depression, and the Post-Concussion Symptom Scale (PCSS) sleep cluster was used to quantify sleep disturbance. Depression was examined dichotomously (depressed/non-depressed). Neurocognitive functioning was examined via z-score composites of attention/processing speed (A/PS) and memory. Two mediation analyses, with depression as the independent variable, sleep disturbance as the mediator, and A/PS or memory performance as outcomes were conducted using the SPSS PROCESS macro, with 5000 bootstrap samples and 95% confidence interval.
In the first mediation, depression was significantly associated with poorer A/PS performance (ß = -0.13, p = 0.02) and greater sleep disturbance (ß = 1.89, p < 0.001). Sleep disturbance was also negatively associated with A/PS performance (ß = -0.01, p = 0.03). After controlling for sleep disturbance, the relationship between depression and A/PS performance became non-significant (ß = -0.10, p = 0.08, indirect effect = -0.08, 95%CI[-0.057,-0.004]), indicating mediation via sleep disturbance. In the second mediation model, depression was not significantly associated with memory performance, so the mediation was discontinued.
Sleep disturbance fully mediated the relationship between depression and A/PS performance. This suggests that sleep problems account for the relationship between depression and A/PS. Future work should examine interventions aimed at improving sleep in depressed college athletes which may translate to better academic and athletic performance through improved attention and processing speed.

© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.