Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

In Canada, approximately 8% of adults will experience at least one lifetime episode of major depression, which is the leading cause of years lived with a disability worldwide, and costs Canadians over 14.4 billion dollars a year (Health Canada). Most people with depression have concurrent insomnia (70-90%). The presence of insomnia predicts greater resistance to depression treatment, and depression and insomnia are both independently linked to increased cardiovascular disease and mortality. Cardiovascular abnormalities are associated with physiological insomnia markers in the brain (e.g., increased high frequency activity on a brain scan). I will explore a combined insomnia and depression treatment as a means to alter cardiovascular risk as measured by heart rate variability (HRV), a marker known to be associated with increased cardiovascular risk in both individuals with depression and insomnia. Despite the stated associations of both insomnia and depression with cardiovascular disease, combined treatments for depression and insomnia have yet to be tested for decreasing cardiovascular risk. As such, my thesis will examine HRV as an index of cardiovascular risk and its relationship to high frequency activity in the brain during the overnight post-treatment brain scan under three conditions: depression only treatment, insomnia only treatment, and combined depression and insomnia treatment. My hypothesis is that the combined treatment will have the greatest improvement in HRV, which will correlate with decreases in the high frequency brain activity. Ultimately, the main goal of this study is to decrease the cardiovascular risk of individuals with depression and insomnia. Results from this study may encourage treatment providers to target insomnia in those with depression in order to decrease cardiovascular risk.