Overview

Sleep problems are a core feature of many physical and psychiatric conditions, including severe mental illnesses (SMI) such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Despite this, sleep issues are often neglected in the characterisation and treatment of SMI (Faulkner et al., 2016). In our recent discussions with people with bipolar disorder, they highlighted how their subjective experiences of sleep are rarely asked about beyond standardised questionnaires, and they felt that their subjective sleep experience is often considered to be unimportant by researchers and healthcare providers. This is reflected in the bipolar disorder literature, which is dominated by positivist studies and which, to the author’s best knowledge, contains no qualitative research on sleep in bipolar disorder where sleep is the principal focus.

This project responds directly to these observations, by using qualitative interview and photo-elicitation methods to explore the subjective sleep experience of people with bipolar (‘experts by experience’). These semi-structured interviews will cover not only the physical and mental experience of sleep, but will also explore healthcare experiences, socioeconomic influences and unmet needs relating to sleep. We will contextualise the experiences of people with bipolar by additionally conducting a focus group with sleep specialists and healthcare professionals (‘experts by profession’), to further understand commonly-used sleep metrics and explore how qualitative sleep data could enrich research into, and healthcare of, people with bipolar.

To our knowledge, this is the first study with the primary aim of exploring subjective experiences of sleep in people with bipolar disorder. This project will also generate pilot data which will be used as a foundation for future research activities to co-produce sleep hygiene guidelines for people with bipolar disorder.

Outcomes

The project is ongoing.