Gercs, Catherine Jayne (2023). The relationship between sleep, anxiety, and emotion recognition in the perinatal period. University of Birmingham. Clin.Psy.D.
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Gercs2023ClinPsyD_Redacted.pdf
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Abstract
This thesis consists of two papers: a meta-analysis and an empirical study. The thesis also contains two press releases providing a summary of both papers. The research papers aimed to explore the state of the current literature regarding the relationship between sleep deprivation and anxiety in the perinatal period and explore how this relationship may influence a new parent’s ability to accurately recognise emotions in infants.
The meta-analysis found an association between sleep problems and anxiety across the perinatal period irrespective of location, time of data collection and anxiety presentation. This was the first meta-analysis of its kind and further questioning into factors which may influence this relationship, including individual participant characteristics and differences between anxiety-related presentations is recommended. The findings of the meta-analysis also highlight an important possible difference between the measurement of sleep quality and sleep quantity as sleep constructs.
The empirical study used a within and between participants design to measure sleep, anxiety, and emotion recognition across the perinatal period. This pilot study found that new parents experience greater sleep disruption and higher anxiety than in pregnancy. Contrary to wider literature, sleep difficulties were not significantly associated with changes in anxiety. For the emotion recognition task, there was a trend for performance decreasing for both parents and controls for Happy stimuli, with performance remaining consistent for Neutral and Sad stimuli. Interestingly, parents’ confidence increased at postpartum for all emotional states which differed to changes in confidence identified for control participants.
| Type of Work: | Thesis (Doctorates > Clin.Psy.D.) | ||||||
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| Award Type: | Doctorates > Clin.Psy.D. | ||||||
| Supervisor(s): |
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| Licence: | All rights reserved | ||||||
| College/Faculty: | Colleges (2008 onwards) > College of Life & Environmental Sciences | ||||||
| School or Department: | School of Psychology | ||||||
| Funders: | None/not applicable | ||||||
| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology | ||||||
| URI: | http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/14409 |
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