Snoozy Science: Body Clocks, Sleep and Mental Health

We are discovering more and more about the importance of the relationships between mental health and the body clock through research, but we need your help to find out more. Body Clocks are internal rhythms that are essential to physical and mental functions. These internal clocks help to align our body and mind with our environment, and can change when our environment does. For example, they can prepare us for when we should eat, be active, be alert, rest, sleep, wake up.... and so much more.
Changes to our environment can cause disruptions to our body clocks, which can impact our mental health, but this goes both ways - mental health difficulties can disrupt our body clocks. We want to know what research questions are important to people who experience this, so that we can inform what future research should be focusing on.

Bipolar disorder (also known as 'manic depression') is a severe mood disorder affecting at least one in fifty people, characterized by recurrent episodes of depression and mania. The causes of bipolar disorder are still largely unknown, although it is clear that genetic predisposition plays an important role. Bipolar disorder can be viewed as a primary disorder of circadian regulation, particularly with respect to rhythms of sleep, energy and metabolism. This talk will argue that circadian disruption (rather than subjective mood state) is the core deficit in bipolar disorder, and will discuss the implications of this for new treatment approaches. It will also cover some current research in this area, including the HELIOS-BD and AMBIENT-BD projects.