Do you ever wonder about who decides what research focuses on? Well, usually it’s decided by researchers and the people who fund research (which can also mean pharmaceutical companies).
Usually, those most impacted by research, people with the conditions that are being researched and those who treat and support them, don’t get a say in what questions research should be addressing. We want things to be different.
To understand what questions research should be answering about mental health and our circadian rhythms, we asked the experts – individuals with lived experience of mental health difficulties and/or circadian disruption, their caretakers, and clinicians who work with them.
Circadian rhythms are our internal clocks (sometimes called “body clocks”) that align us with our environment, and help prepare our bodies and minds for what is coming. These rhythms help us prepare for sleep, waking up, eating, and much more.
We know there is a relationship between our body clocks and our mental health, but there is still so much that we don’t understand. So, where do we start?
First, research needs to determine which questions are most important to answer. To do this, the Circadian Mental Health Network launched a priority setting partnership (PSP) in collaboration with the James Lind Alliance – an organisation focused on ensuring the views of people with lived experience, and the caretakers and clinicians who support and treat them are heard in research.
The PSP aimed to identify the most important questions research should answer about mental health and the body clock.
To do this, we worked with individuals with lived experience of mental health difficulties, circadian rhythm disruption, and experience of both. We also had caretakers, supporters, clinicians, and clinical support workers with backgrounds in helping those with lived experience of mental health difficulties and/or circadian disruption. They were crucial to every stage of this process.
This group of experts helped us design and share a public survey to collect all of the questions people had about mental health and the body clock that they wanted research to answer.
After collecting over 900 questions, we had the massive task of pulling them together, merging similar questions, rewording them to make them clear to everyone, and identifying whether any were already well answered by research. At every stage of this process, our experts were involved and helped us eventually narrow things down to just 63 questions.
We then launched a new survey asking people to choose 10 of the 63 questions they considered most important. We took the results of this survey into a final workshop, bringing together even more individuals with lived experience, caretakers and clinicians to decide on a final Top 25 list.
The complete Top 25 list is available on this website, but the Top 10 are included below:
- Does the interaction between mental health and the body clock vary by age, especially during different life stages?
- What strategies (including medications) are effective in treating disrupted body clocks co-occurring with mental health issues?
- What is the relationship between the body clock and mental health in neurodivergent individuals and does body clock disruption worsen mental health in these individuals?
- What is the relationship between a disrupted body clock and bipolar disorder, or between a disrupted body clock and psychosis? What are the mechanisms involved in this?
- What societal and/or policy changes can help prevent mental health issues for, and reduce stigma towards, extreme chronotypes?
- What is the relationship between (peri)menopause, mental health and body clocks?
- How does mental trauma (e.g., grief) affect the body clock? How can this be managed?
- Would it be better for a person’s mental health to follow their own (natural) rhythms or to follow more typical sleep patterns and/or social patterns?
- What is the relationship between seasonal changes, body clocks, mental wellbeing and mental health issues?
- Can mental health difficulties, such as anxiety or depression, cause disruption of the body clock at a molecular level, or are these driven mainly by behavioural factors?
These are the questions identified by people with lived experience, caretakers, and clinicians as priorities for future research.
If you are a researcher interested in tackling any of these research priorities, please get in touch with us. The Circadian Mental Health Network can support and collaborate with researchers working to answer these questions.
