Acute effects of daylight saving time clock changes on mental and physical health in England: population based retrospective cohort study.

objectiveTo explore the acute effects of daylight saving time clock changes on mental and physical health events in primary and secondary care in England.

designPopulation based retrospective cohort study.

settingEnglish primary care practices contributing to the Clinical Practice Research Datalink GOLD database, linked to hospital admissions and accident and emergency data.

participants683 809 people (road traffic injuries: all ages; cardiovascular disease: aged ≥40 years; all other conditions: ≥10 years) registered with a participating English general practice, with a health event for one of the health conditions of interest in their primary or secondary care record in the eight weeks surrounding the spring or autumn clock changes between 2008 and 2019.

main outcome measuresHealth events were defined as a diagnosis code (or symptom code and prescription for mental health conditions in primary care) of anxiety, major acute cardiovascular disease, depression, eating disorder, road traffic injury, self-harm, or sleep disorder in primary or secondary care or a psychiatric condition in accident and emergency. Negative binomial regression models, adjusted for day of the week and region (and Easter weekend in spring), compared mean event rates per day in the week after the clock changes and the control period (four weeks before the changes and weeks 2-4 after).

resultsIn the week after the autumn clock change, five health conditions had fewer events: anxiety (from 17.3 events per day (per year, per region) to 16.7; incidence rate ratio 0.97, 95% confidence interval 0.95 to 0.98), acute cardiovascular disease (from 50.0 to 48.9; 0.98, 0.96 to 0.999), depression (from 44.6 to 42.7; 0.96, 0.95 to 0.97), psychiatric conditions (from 3.5 to 3.3; 0.94, 0.90 to 0.98), and sleep disorders (from 5.4 to 4.9; 0.92, 0.87 to 0.97). Little evidence was found of reductions in eating disorder diagnoses, road traffic injuries, or self-harm or of changes after the spring clock change.

conclusionThe week after the autumn clock change was associated with a reduction in events for cardiovascular disease, sleep disorders, and mental health disorders, but little evidence suggested that the spring clock change was associated with a change in the number of health events. Electronic health records contain the date that a health event is recorded by a clinician, which is not necessarily the date of symptom onset.