Associations between Children’s Sleep, Gender, and Mental Health: Evidence from the ABCD Study

We examined within-person associations between sleep problems, internalizing behaviors, and externalizing problem behaviors. We found within-person associations from earlier sleep problems to later externalizing and internalizing behaviors across late middle childhood through early adolescence. Only girls’ but not boys’ higher-than-personal average externalizing behaviors predicted higher-than-personal average levels of sleep problems.