Sleep, dissocation and mood in NES
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The experience of sleep, dissociation and mood in Non-Epileptic Seizures.
IRAS ID
239312
Contact name
Saafi Mousa
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
The University of Leeds
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 10 months, 29 days
Research summary
Non-epileptic seizures (NES) refer to seizures and involuntary movements that look like epilepsy but occur without organic causes. There is little knowledge about how NES develops as there is no electric brain activity during such seizures, unlike epileptic seizures. It's been suggested that psychological factors are important in the development of NES, however, this is poorly understood. Whilst there is some evidence that psychological interventions are effective for NES, there are no standardised treatments or guidelines to treat NES.
Recent evidence suggests that impaired sleep is common in NES and has implications for understanding the processes that cause NES. Impaired sleep is known to worsen dissociation, a mental process that causes disconnection in a person's thoughts, memory and sense of identity and a key process in NES. This brings us to our proposed study, which aims to gather information on subjective and objective experiences of sleep in individuals with non-epileptic seizures (NES) and comparing this with a control group. We're further interested in how impaired sleep affects mood and dissociation in this population.
For this project, we aim to recruit 30 patients with a diagnosis of NES and a control group of 30 individuals without seizure disorders and collect sleep, dissociation and mood data. Participants will be recruited from local NHS trusts and the University of Leeds's database of research volunteers. Participants will be recruited over 12 months and will include attending a pre-participation meeting in which participants complete a set of questionnaires. Participants will then be asked to do the following over the next 7 days; wear an Actiwatch, complete a sleep diary upon waking and complete daily mood and dissociation questionnaire before going to sleep. They will then be invited to a post-participation meeting to return the research material and be given a voucher to reimburse travel costs.
REC name
North East - Newcastle & North Tyneside 1 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/NE/0285
Date of REC Opinion
12 Sep 2018
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion