Our 2025 Newsletter
- Amy Ferguson
- 7 days ago
- 5 min read
Welcome to our Newsletter!
It has been a busy year for the Circadian Mental Health Network, from our first ever conference to the completion of our Priority Setting Partnership. For more detail on some of the things we have been working on, check out our other blog posts.
The First Circadian Mental Health Network Conference
In June, we hosted our first Circadian Mental Health Network Conference in Edinburgh. Over the two-day event, we were extremely excited to welcome Network members and non-members from across the world.
On the 5th June, we hosted our first data anonymisation workshop: “Practical Data Anonymisation in Circadian and Mental Health Research”. This workshop helped to address the questions many Network members had about working with sensitive data. You can read more about the workshop here, and you can also find all of the training materials on our GitHub.
Everyone was then welcomed to the first Circadian Mental Health Network Conference by our Network lead, Prof Daniel Smith. He reminded us of the objectives of the Network: to set the research agenda in mental health and circadian science, to set standards for data sharing, supporting researchers in the early stages of their careers across this field, and to create a supportive network. We ended our first day with some networking, and some recommendations for exploring Edinburgh.
On the 6th June, we held dedicated sessions for each of these objectives. This included a dedicated session on co-production and how important the voices of individuals with lived experience have been to the work of the Network. In partnership with our lived experience experts, we had the public launch on the “Top 10 Research Priorities for Mental Health and the Body Clock” (more below).
A panel discussion with some of our experts helped the attendees learn more about the work we have done. You can find out more on the McPin Foundation blog.
We also had a fantastic session on data sharing and open science. This session reflected on the many training courses that have been provided by the Network, the publications released focusing on the current culture of data sharing, and the opportunities for the future. The Network has been dedicated to making data sharing clearer for everyone since its’ launch.
If you missed any of these training sessions or the publications, you can check out our previous blog posts.
During this conference, we continued to highlight future opportunities both within and outside of the Network. To help with this, we were so excited to welcome Kim Donoghue (Wellcome Trust) and Christian Cox (NIHR) to detail many of the funding paths that those working in mental health, sleep and circadian science could explore.
Over the course of the Network, we have been working to support Early Career Researchers (ECRs) working in the field of mental health and circadian science. We have launched Networking and Engagement grants, Pilot Project grants and Conference Travel Awards. Our Networking and Engagement grants were awarded to 8 ECRs, and 3 ECRs were awarded Pilot Project grants. We also felt very lucky to be able to support 17 ECRs with our Conference Travel Awards. We were very happy to be able to have ECRs from the UK, Australia, USA, South America and across Europe join us for our first conference. During the conference, we shared more of the work that the Network has been doing to support ECRs, and to hear from some of the ECRs themselves. Across the conference, we shared 6 ECR flash talks and over 40 ECR poster presentations.
Lastly, we were extremely lucky to welcome two amazing keynote speakers:
Prof Anna Wirz-Justice give a fantastic talk on chronotherapies. It was both an exploration of the work that has been done on using light as a therapy in the past and a highlighting some of the research that is revisiting chronotherapies and their potential use for mental health conditions
Dr Nicholas Meyer who further highlighted the importance of involving chronobiology when studying psychiatric conditions.
You can watch some of the talks from our Conference on the Network YouTube channel.
Top 10 Research Priorities in Mental Health and Circadian Science
In partnership with the James Lind Alliance, the Network has undertaken a Priority Setting Partnership to identify the most important questions research should be focusing on in the field of mental health and circadian science. These priorities have been submitted by the experts in this area, including individuals with lived experience and those who support and care for them.
Working with a Steering Group of individuals with lived experience of mental health difficulties and/or circadian disruptions, clinicians and carers, we launched two surveys to identify what questions people had about “Mental Health and the Body Clock” and which of these questions they would want research to answer the most. After a final workshop of bringing together more individuals with lived experience, carers and clinicians, we arrived at a Top 25 priorities for research. There were many processes involved to reach this point, and we could not have completed this without all of the support from our lived experience partners, including The McPin Foundation. You can read more details about each of these processes here, and you can hear from some of our lived experience Steering Group members about their views on this PSP.
If you are interested in addressing any of these priorities, please get in touch and we can discuss how the Network can support you.
Supporting Early Career Researchers
We have been very lucky to be able to support ECRs throughout the Network. This year, we awarded our first Pilot Project grants. We had an overwhelming number of applications, and we recruited a review board of senior researchers, ECRs and individuals with lived experience to assess the applications. We awarded three awards to Emma Sullivan, Renu Bala and Alexandra Stainton. There will be more updates on their projects coming soon.
On World Mental Health Day, we also launched our first Research Spotlight series to shine a light on the work being done by researchers across the field of mental health, sleep and circadian science. This series has allowed thirteen ECRs (so far) to share their ongoing work with both the wider research community and the general public.
Thank you for all your support in 2025, and we are excited to see what 2026 will bring!
You can find out more about the work of the Network via our blog, mailing list and social media (if you would like to join, please contact us, circadianmentalhealthnetwork@ed.ac.uk).
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