Sleep and Health Webinar - Session 2

In this second of two webinars, hear from leading experts in the field of sleep and health and find out about their latest research.

Programme includes the following presentations; 

Treating sleep problems in patients with psychosis

Dr Felicity Waite

Dr Felicity Waite is clinical research psychologist at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford. She is the Deputy Lead of the Oxford Cognitive Approaches to Psychosis (O-CAP) and a Wellcome Trust Clinical Doctoral Research Fellow. Felicity leads the SleepWell trial, which investigates if treating sleep problems can prevent the onset of serious mental health problems in young people aged 14-25 years. Previously she worked on the Better Sleep Trial and SleepWell case series. Both projects tested psychological interventions targeting sleep: a key factor contributing to distressing psychotic experiences.

Sleep and cognitive health: neural mechanisms and clinical perspectives

Professor Thanh Dang-Vu

Thanh Dang-Vu is Professor & Concordia University Research Chair in Sleep, Neuroimaging and Cognitive Health, Centre for Studies in Behavioral Neurobiology. Prof Dang-Vu is also an attending neurologist and the Associate Director for Clinical Research at the Institut Universitaire de Gériatrie de Montréal (IUGM) and the Vice President (Research) of the Canadian Sleep Society. His research interests are focused on the interface between neuroimaging, sleep, and neurology, in order to investigate the neural correlates of spontaneous brain activity and consciousness, the role of sleep in brain plasticity, the pathophysiology of sleep disorders, and the clinical biomarkers of neurological disease progression.

Managing sleep disturbances in people with epilepsy

Dr Sofia Eriksson

Dr Sofia Eriksson is a consultant neurologist and honorary associate professor at National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and University College London Hospitals and the UCL/Institute of Neurology. She is the hospital’s clinical lead for epilepsy as well as neurological sleep disorders. In 2019 she was elected to the council of the Association of British neurologists (ABN) and is also a member of the ABN’s expert panel for epilepsy and the European Academy of Neurology’s scientific panel for Sleep-Wake disorders. Her research interests are parasomnias, particularly investigations and treatment of NREM parasomnias, sleep disorders in neurological conditions, such as epilepsy, dementia and Parkinson’s disease, and epilepsy, particularly focusing on brain imaging and histopathology.

Why healthy sleep in children is so important: sleep and mental health

Professor Marc Weissbluth

Marc Weissbluth, M.D., is Professor Emeritus of Clinical Pediatrics at Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, in Chicago, USA (website: https://marcweissbluth.com/). Prof Weissbluth is a leading researcher on sleep and children and founded the original Sleep Disorders Center at Children’s Memorial Hospital.  Prof Weissbluth coined the now familiar phrase “sleep training” to describe his method for helping children learn how to fall asleep. His finding that changing the time a child is put to bed dramatically decreases the number of night awakenings was published in journal Sleep in 1982. Since its original publication in 1987, his book “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child” has sold more than a million copies and, in twelve foreign editions, helped millions of families the world over.