Sleep, circadian rhythms and mental health in schools (SCRAMS)

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Adolescence is a key developmental stage for the onset of mental illness. It is also a time when getting enough sleep becomes a major challenge. Disrupted sleep represents an important potential risk factor for mental ill-health in young people but this is an area that has not yet been properly investigated. This project will build on already well-established links with schools in Scotland (the Schools Health and Wellbeing Improvement Research Network, called SHINE) to develop a UK-wide research collaboration focused on investigating sleep and mental health within schools. Schools-based research of this kind offers many advantages in terms of the large-scale recruitment of young people to research studies, plus schools-based treatments have considerable potential to influence long-term mental health outcomes at a population level. With input from pupils, parents and teachers, we will design and carry out a programme of public engagement focused on sleep and mental health within schools. We will also conduct a series of small-scale feasibility studies that will help us to design more comprehensive studies in the future. These studies will find the most effective way to collect objective sleep and mental health data, light exposure data (both natural light and artificial light), and biological samples in adolescents within schools. Overall, this project has the potential to establish a new schools-based adolescent mental health research consortium focused on understanding the complex relationships between sleep, light exposure and mental wellbeing, with a view to developing better interventions for mental health in the future.