Examining the relationship between sleep and mental health

Refreshments will be available, with time for continuing discussions after the presentations.

1) Helge Gillmeister (Department of Psychology)

Bidirectional relationships between circadian rhythms and mental wellbeing

How do fluctuations in sleep-wake cycles and mental wellbeing affect one another? This question is at the heart of our Wellcome trust funded project, from which I will present preliminary findings. One study uses a longitudinal dataset to analyse whether feelings of disconnection from the self and the world, which are common through adolescence and early adulthood, can be predicted from poor sleep, and whether feelings of disconnection lead to poor sleep in turn. A second study tracks young adults' daily fluctuations in physiology (heart rate and sleep) and mental health status (feelings of disconnection, anxiety, depression, psychosis) over the course of 4 weeks to understand the predictive links between sleep and mental health parameters more closely. This work is part of an active, ongoing project to help preserve and restore mental wellbeing by working with rather than against our body's natural rhythms, and ideas from the audience will be very much invited to shape future collaborations in this exciting field.

2) Meena Kumari (ISER)

Understanding sleep in Understanding Society

Research on sleep has traditionally examined the effects of sleep quantity on various outcomes; however distinction has been made between the amount of sleep people get and the quality of that sleep.

Problems with sleep are reported to be widespread and have many health and other implications. For example, sleep deprivation (short sleep duration), insomnia and daytime sleepiness have considerable economic ramifications. The causes and consequences of short sleep and poor sleep quality have received attention with researchers investigating social, environmental and other correlates of sleep behaviours. To this end, the UK Household Longitudinal Study: ‘Understanding Society’ included a module on sleep at its inception (2009) and has repeated the questions 6 times between 2009 and 2025 enabling analysis of sleep over time and across the lifecourse.

This presentation will provide an overview of Understanding Society and research conducted with the sleep data and a variety of exposures, including sleep in the household, sleep and non-standard work schedules and sleep during the pandemic.

3) Hong-Viet V. Ngo-Dehning (Department of Psychology)

Sleep in neurodevelopmental disorders

The feeling of being well rested after a good night of sleep is something we all (hopefully) know and cherish. The importance of sleep is far-reaching and not only limited to common beliefs such as energy saving or physical recovery. Protected from external interference, sleep reflects a unique window for our brain to take care of itself and supports cognitive processes such as memory consolidation or emotional regulation. Accordingly, sleep disturbances are both symptomatic of, as well as contributing factors to psychiatric disorders. Following this notion, healthy sleep is essential for child’s development and alteration in sleep patterns have been linked to neurodevelopmental conditions. To understand sleep in developmental disorders is essential to innovate novel remedial approaches but also to gain fundamental insight into how sleep supports a typical child’s development. In this talk, I will first highlight the importance of sleep and then present an ongoing research endeavor to unravel the processing of social and emotional information during sleep in children with autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. If time allows, I will conclude with the motivation of a novel line of research exploring the link between sleep and dyslexia.

Register on Eventbrite to attend

Venue:

University of Essex, Colchester campus - Causeway Teaching Centre, CTC.2.02

Agenda:

14:00-15:00: Presentations and Q&A

15:00-16:00: Refreshments and time for further discussion and networking