Adolescents’ sleep/wake patterns and school schedules: towards flexibility

In the literature, two main trends may be identified in the countermeasures associated to adolescents’ sleep restriction: sleep education and changes in the school start times (SSTs). However, school educational programmes have been able to increase knowledge about sleep, which did not necessarily result in behavioural changes. Later SSTs have been proposed as a strategy to reduce the adolescents’ sleep restriction, but there is no consensus about the change. Longitudinal studies in adolescent populations are urgently needed in order to determine the efficacy of interventions aiming at a change in SSTs. Academic, behavioural, health and well-being variables could be monitored for an extensive period before and after implementing the new school schedule options, thereby enabling a within-subject experimental design. It is no longer acceptable to impose the “one-size-fits-all” approach on the SSTs.