Feelings of depression can be difficult to manage at any time, but especially at night. Feeling depressed in the evening can create stress, impact your quality of sleep and lead to other negative symptoms. However,“nighttime depression” isn’t a separate clinical diagnosis from major depressive disorder. Increased depressive symptoms in the evening is a commonly reported experience.

When you’re in college, experiencing mental distress at night can affect your ability to sleep, socialize, study and more. It can be confusing and frustrating. Fortunately, recovery is possible. Seeking mental health treatment can be a great step in the right direction. If you’re going to therapy every now and then but it doesn’t feel effective enough, you may want to consider a more intensive mental health treatment program.

Whatever treatment path you choose, uncovering the reasons behind your symptoms is important. A licensed clinical therapist can help you identify the drivers and core processes behind your nighttime depression. Once you understand why you’re experiencing certain symptoms, you can start addressing them more effectively.

Potential reasons why you might feel more depressed at night

• Built-up stress — Sometimes your brain might feel like a container for stress that fills up throughout the day. By the time you’re going to bed, that stress may seem overwhelming. Stress and worries that linger throughout the day can cause you to feel more depressed at night. You may find yourself unable to fall asleep, instead dwelling on perceived failures and mistakes. Mental health treatment can help you reduce stress and change negative thought processes, enabling you to have more peaceful nights.
• Silence — During the day, life can be distracting. Activities like classes and social events may keep you from thinking about your mental health. While these distractions may seem to provide relief during the day, you may end up experiencing more significant depression symptoms in the evening as a result. Things tend to quiet down at night. As you prepare for bed, unresolved worries and negative feelings may well up in the silence. Though the world around you may become more quiet, your thoughts may feel louder, causing you to feel more depressed at night. Whether your depression symptoms are persistent or come in waves, finding a solution is essential. With professional treatment, you can address the causes behind your depression directly.
• Disrupted sleep patterns — Depression often disrupts typical sleeping patterns. You may have a hard time keeping yourself to a regular sleeping schedule; you may find yourself sleeping too much or too little. Insomnia occurs in 80% to 90% of people with depression, according to the American Psychiatric Association. If you’re used to having trouble sleeping, you may dread your evenings. This can lead to worsening depression symptoms in the evenings. By working to address sleeping concerns and improve your schedule, your mental health treatment providers can help transform your typical night into a pleasant period of rest and rejuvenation.
• Fatigue — Fatigue is a common symptom of depression. When you’re depressed, you may feel physically and mentally exhausted throughout your day. This exhaustion may become more intense as your day goes on, causing you to feel deeply fatigued and overworked at the end of the day. Fatigue can have a big impact on your mood. When you’re feeling completely exhausted at night, especially if you still have responsibilities to take care of, you may get sad or frustrated. In addition to lowering your mood, fatigue can also contribute to low self-esteem. You may feel like you are weak for feeling tired. This can be exacerbated by comparing yourself to others. In college, you may have peers who stay up late studying or going to parties and seem to still function just fine. Mental health treatment providers use a few different strategies to address depression-related fatigue. Your therapist might recommend more rest, energy-boosting exercises, specialized coping techniques and more.
• Social media use — Do you often scroll through social media late at night? This may contribute to your nighttime depression symptoms. Excessive social media use at any time can be harmful to your mental health. At night, free of other obligations and distractions, it can be especially easy to stay on social media for long periods of time. Spending a long time on social media without breaks, especially when reading a lot of negative news, is sometimes called “doomscrolling.” Doomscrolling can intensify negative thoughts and feelings you may already be experiencing. In addition, it can disrupt your sleep schedule. Getting inadequate sleep can lead to exhaustion and further mood dysfunction. Treatment can help you change your habits, improve your relationship with social media and boost your mood.

Lightfully U can help address your daytime and nighttime depression symptoms

Your depression doesn’t have to keep you up at night. With the right course of treatment, you can get the help you need to start addressing your depression symptoms now. At Lightfully U, we’re committed to helping each client get treatment that works for them. Everything we do is based on a framework of compassionate, evidence-based care. Our licensed clinical therapists are ready to help address your depression, providing the tools and support you need to reach mental wellness.

Change is possible. When you’re ready to get effective depression treatment, reach out to our Admissions Concierge Team. We’ll take the next steps together, toward the fullest, brightest version of you.