Sleep and Psychotic Features in Serious Mental Illness
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The Relationship between Sleep and Circadian Rhythms and psychotic features in serious mental illness
IRAS ID
207591
Contact name
Katharina Wulff
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Clinical Trials and Research Governance, University of Oxford
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
N/A, N/A
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 5 months, 31 days
Research summary
All humans need sleep. However, issues with difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep and following regular sleep patterns are common problems in many mental health disorders. What we call 'sleep and circadian rhythm disturbances' (SCRD) can impact your mood, cognition and ability to get things done.
Many people with psychosis (that is, people who may hear, see or believe things that other's do not) have shown to have profound SCRD. Research studies have shown that these disturbances can occur in up to 80% of psychosis patients. Furthermore, research has also shown that these disturbances also occur before the onset of psychosis. This suggests that sleep treatment may be important in the early stages of psychosis.
In this study, the authors explore whether SCRD impacts the experience of psychotic symptoms in people referred to an Early intervention or a crisis service and suffer from psychotic symptoms. We will be asking people to complete some interviews and questionnaires. We will also be asking people to either wear a regular acitwatch for 3 weeks or a special watch with a touch screen interface 2 weeks pending on their suitability. After a period of 2 months, we will then ask these people to wear the same watch again for the same period of time. These watches will measure the quality of their sleep. We also ask participants to fill out a sleep diary each day in order to evaluate how they feel about their sleep. The watch with the touch screen interface will also beep at 3 fixed time-points throughout each day and will ask people about how they feel that day. This method of research is known as Experience Sampling Method (ESM). It is hoped that this research will aid the development of sleep treatments to improve the symptoms in people who experience psychosis.
REC name
London - Bromley Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/LO/1263
Date of REC Opinion
14 Sep 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion