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Archive
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2017
- January
- February
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March
- Professor Robert Stewart awarded ‘Collaborate to Innovate’ project
- NIHR Maudsley BRC researchers receive Senior Investigator awards
- Research blog: Using social media to recognise mental health conditions
- Department of Health Chief Scientific Adviser Chris Whitty visits Maudsley BRC
- NIHR Maudsley BRC commences five-year research programme
- IMPARTS Seminar Learning from experience
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April
- New research highlights higher hospitalisation rates in people with intellectual disabilities
- Digital Technology for Mental Health: Asking the right questions
- NIHR Maudsley BRC holiday closure Easter 2017
- Maudsley becomes London’s Global Digital Exemplar
- CRIS blog: An online risk calculator to identify candidates for early intervention services
- May
- June
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July
- NIHR Maudsley BRC researcher wins award to understand suicide warning signs in children
- Who are the NIHR? #WeAreNIHR
- Brain stimulation may improve cognitive performance in people with schizophrenia
- Risk for bipolar disorder associated with faster ageing
- Omega-3 fatty acids improve symptoms in children and adolescents with ADHD
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August
- South London and Maudsley tops NIHR league table for number of active research studies
- Connecting care homes with research
- Research blog: Using advanced search technologies to help manage infectious disease outbreaks
- A&E attendance for people with dementia is common and increasing
- Event: Seminar on dementia art project "Beyond Memories"
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November
- Professor Oliver Howes receives Royal College of Psychiatrists Award
- First network analysis of patient flow in two UK hospitals published
- Honorary Degree for Professor Dame Til Wykes
- Concentrated naloxone nasal spray as good as injection
- Professor Matthew Hotopf appointed Vice Dean
- Potential for machine learning to predict unknown adverse drug reactions
- Complications at birth associated with lasting chemical changes in the brain
- Study examines opiate-dependent patient deaths
- NIHR Lectureship awarded
- Treatment cuts migraine days by half
- December
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2016
- January
- February
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March
- CRIS Blog: Serious Mental Illness and Pregnancy
- Kings world-class contribution to understanding of clozapine
- Research blog: PROMPT project reveals complex profile of people using psychological therapy services
- Tony David John Toulmin Lecture
- Crick synapse event
- IMPARTS Seminar Harnessing digital technology in mental and physical healthcare
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April
- CRIS blog: Eight years on
- Experts call for greater recognition of little-known forms of dementia
- Event: Clinical Research Facility Research Forum
- Ewan Birney MRC SGDP Seminar
- Al Chalabi Sheila Essey Award
- Event Pint of Science 2016
- RADAR CNS smartphone wearable devices transform medical care
- Cardiovascular drug underprescribing
- Consultation reveals better integration between physical & mental health physicians as top priority
- Prestigious Fellowships awarded to BRC researchers
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May
- Dermatology clinic psychology screening project shortlisted for BMJ Awards
- Independent Researcher Awards 2016
- BMJ Award for team who are incorporating mental health service into dermatology clinic
- Research blog systematic biases in death certification
- Event launch of new collaboration for digital innovation in mental health
- Victoria Derbyshire show inheritance mental illness
- BRC spin out Mindwave launches
- Research blog: Learning how to be a critical friend to researchers
- Research blog International Clinical Trials Day
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June
- Blood test to personalise depression treatment for the first time
- Centre for Translational Informatics launches
- Professor John Strang receives Knighthood
- Film mental health summer school
- Mental health hackday - your help needed
- Research blog Trialling an online tool to help women make decisions about antidepressants in pregnancy
- Data linkage group your help needed
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July
- CRIS blog: Investigating the impact of antipsychotic medications used to treat people with serious mental illness
- Research blog Maudsley BRC part of winning team at NIHR training camp
- Neuroimaging theme research funding
- NIHR Maudsley BRC announces 2016 Youth Awards winners
- Event Illusions A window to your brain
- August
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September
- Matthew Hotopf wins prestigious Katon Research Award
- IMPARTS shortlisted for HSJ award
- NIHR Maudsley BRC receives £66m new investment from government
- NIHR Maudsley BRC researchers win prestigious awards
- Event NIHR i4i Programme Mental Health Challenge Awards Launch
- Genetic tests could help predict which psychosis patients will develop schizophrenia
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October
- BRC leaders receive academic promotions
- Event No Exchange, Same Pain, No Gain - Risk-Reward of Wearable Healthcare Disclosure for Receiving Pain Treatment
- C4C recruits 10k
- Research blog: How fatty clues in the blood are improving our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease
- Early intervention shows promising long-term reduction in severity of autism symptoms
- Bringing mental health education to a classroom of 300
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November
- South London and Maudsley rated top mental health trust for recruiting patients to clinical studies
- Mental Health & Technology: Ideas Generation Workshop
- NIHR i4i mental health challenge launch
- UK Government announces £4m investment in NIHR Wellcome Trust King’s Clinical Research Facility
- NIHR Maudsley BRC PhD student wins International Society for the History of Neurosciences book prize
- NIHR Maudsley BRC's takeover challenge
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December
- Event Suicide detection and prevention using mobile technology, social media and informatics
- Event Misconceptions and Reconceptualisations in Digital Mental Health
- Research blog: Defining treatment resistance in schizophrenia
- Mental health needs of baby boomers covered in new report from England’s Chief Medical Officer
- 2015
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2018
- January
- February
- March
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April
- UK Biobank mental health study
- CRIS blog: Using CRIS to evaluate mental health diagnoses in routine national statistics
- Engaging in physical activity decreases people’s chance of developing depression
- Unprecedented study identifies 44 genetic risk factors for major depression
- New research: Hospitals often missing dementia despite prior diagnosis
- May
- June
- July
- August
- September
- October
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November
- 2018 Takeover Challenge
- CRIS blog: The future of psychiatry research
- CRIS blog: Do long-term prescriptions of multiple antipsychotics contribute to the reduced life expectancy of patients with serious mental illness?
- Improving dementia care and treatment saves thousands of pounds in care homes
- New service in south London reduces hospital readmissions for people with bipolar disorder
- Ten BRC researchers and academics among most cited in the world
- Students 'take over' the BRC
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December
- Computers can ‘spot the difference’ between healthy brains and the brains of people with Dissociative Identity Disorder
- Service User Advisory Group for 12-16-year-olds
- New Clinical Disorders and Health Behaviours cluster lead announced
- Blog: The SLG Arts Assassins collaborate with the BRC
- Professor Matthew Hotopf receives CBE at Buckingham Palace
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2019
- January
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February
- Eating a healthy diet can ease symptoms of depression
- Pathfinders and the public
- NIHR Maudsley BRC researchers host dementia discussion in collaboration with South London Theatre
- Could intranasal oxytocin be used to treat people at clinically high risk of psychosis?
- CRIS blog: Using data on hospital episodes to look at the physical health of people with personality disorders
Blog: Sleep and substance use - the scale of the problem
Jo Neale is Professor in Addictions Qualitative Research based within the National Addiction Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London.
According to the famous poem by English dramatist James Shirley, death is a leveller because it comes to everyone regardless of their social status. In its own way difficulty sleeping is also a leveller. We all need sleep.
Admittedly, the risk of experiencing problems with sleep is affected by a wide range of physical, psychological, social and environmental factors, e.g. physical illness, stress and anxiety, and sleeping environment. Yet, there are very few people who can honestly say that they have never had a bad night’s sleep and many who will happily talk at length about their recent experiences of sleeplessness and sleep deprivation. Basically, sleeping poorly is something we can nearly all relate to and empathize with.
Although many people use substances, particularly alcohol, to try to help them fall asleep, it is widely recognized that alcohol and other drugs are more likely to worsen rather than improve sleep quality. For people who report problems with alcohol or other drugs, sleep can be particularly problematic and even traumatic.
In recent years, colleagues and I have had countless conversations and conducted interviews, focus groups and surveys with people who are in treatment or recovery from a substance use disorder. They repeatedly tell us that their sleeping problems cause them to feel distressed, exhausted and unable to cope. Furthermore, tiredness prevents them from engaging with treatment programmes and can trigger lapses and relapses that undermine their recovery efforts.
It therefore seems odd that we seldom focus on, or try to improve, the sleep of people who report problems with alcohol and other drugs. Working in collaboration with our Service User Research Group (SURG), we decided to try to change this by developing a new sleep measurement tool specifically for this population.
Our aim was to develop a scale that would fulfil at least three functions:
- help people using substances to describe, monitor and reflect on their own sleep,
- enable treatment providers to understand the sleep problems experienced by their service users and then work with them to identify strategies to improve their sleep,
- provide researchers with a robust measure for assessing sleep amongst people who use substances.
Our scale was completed in 2018 and published in the journal Sleep. It is quick and easy to complete (it consists of just 23 questions answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’) and is called the Substance Use Sleep Scale (or SUSS for short). Development involved a review of the literature and extensive qualitative research with people who use substances. This was then followed by face-to-face and online surveys to generate quantitative data assessing the scale’s psychometric properties.
SUSS is copyrighted to King’s College London but can be downloaded for personal and non-commercial use.
I would like to thank Action on Addiction and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London for their financial support in developing SUSS.
More recently, we have secured additional funding from The Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust to develop a new ‘Recovery’ app that will include SUSS as well as our widely-used recovery measure SURE. The new app will also be developed in close collaboration with people in treatment and recovery to ensure that it is user-centred, engaging, has appropriate content, and provides a high level of data security. It is being developed for both iOS and Android platforms and will be available to download in 2019.
Tags: Substance use - Sleep - SUSS - SURE - Publications -
By NIHR Maudsley BRC at 3 Oct 2018, 15:47 PM
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