Ah thanks will take a look!

Overall, while these medications are helpful (and often necessary) for managing symptoms for many patients, it is surprising that so little is known about the impacts - knowing more will improve clinical management and hopefully enable informed choices for patients.

There are also many domains not explored to date - for example, the effect of sedation on depression or mood, paranoia, hallucinations, or on important features like employment, relationship status or social functioning. I'm hoping to do more work in this area, so reach out if you are interested!

On the other hand, excessive sleep being used as a strategy to avoid anxiety or challenging situations would be expected to worsen mental health over time, increase isolation, and probably affect social recovery. So - while identified as a positive in the studies this is not straightforward(!)

With respect to wellbeing, a negative impact was also supported (lowered self-esteem, self-efficacy, quality of life, and increased anhedonia). Some positive effects of sedation were noted on improving sleep and therefore symptoms like hallucinations, and on allowing escape more generally...

Nevertheless, a negative impact of sedation on day-to-day functioning was consistently reported across all studies across qualitative and content-analysis based studies, and in the few studies which used validated measures. Sedation was also reported to negatively affect motivation of patients.

In all studies reporting on multiple medication side effects (n=7), sedation was identified in all of them as either the most common (n=5) or in the top three (n=2). Also noteworthy was the lack of definition of sedation, and inconsistent measurement - nearly every study had a different approach...

The majority of studies reflected qualitative or content-analysis approaches (n=8), which limits interpretation and generalisability in many ways. Many studies also were likely to be non-representative in population recruited (e.g. analysing websites or patient forums for medication comments).

We searched for every paper that reported on sedation in the context of antipsychotic use in psychosis AND identified any impact on functioning and wellbeing resulting from sedation...out of ~3300 papers only 11 met these criteria. NONE had collected data to explore this relationship specifically.

New paper out from myself, Kate Robbins and Jo Hodgekins exploring what is known about how sedation from antipsychotics impacts on patients...Short answer, not nearly enough! Longer answer below... www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Important research on clinical perceptions of sedation in psychosis - please take part and circulate if you can! 🙏

We need to improve sleep assessment and treatment in patients with severe mental illness buff.ly/o6fym7H

#Sleep #MentalHealth #SleepAssessment #SleepTreatments #Psychosis #Bipolar #Depression #Insomnia #Nightmares #SleepApnoea #Hypersomnia #Somnolence #Narcolepsy

🧵 THREAD

📣 Research Participants Needed 📣

We are looking for people who have experienced psychosis in Scotland to take part in our Fear of Recurrence study. Participants will be compensated for taking part.

Find out more and sign up at tinyurl.com/ckud5zsb

Reposts appreciated 🙌
#Psychosis #PsychSciSky

Exciting new paper out today in BJClinPsy reporting a qualitative analysis of excessive sleep in psychosis. Really interesting work by @uniofeastanglia.bsky.social trainee Kate Robbins supervised by myself and Jo Hodgekins - please read and share! bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Epic work here from Rebecca Rollinson and the NSFT Better Sleep Programme team (which I am privileged to support). Paper now out in BJClinPsy - doi.org/10.1111/bjc.... - reporting on implementation of a sleep intervention within youth MH services across a whole region of the UK. Several steps ahead!

Making the move over from X/twitter so bear with - hoping for a new start that involves posting more regularly (!).