The CanCope Study is an online trial aiming to help people
who have had cancer cope with difficult emotions they may experience and
improve mental health outcomes. Many people affected by cancer continue
to experience distressing emotions after treatment has finished. The
CanCope Trial is an emotion-focused, transdiagnostic intervention which
explores the mechanisms underlying changes in emotion regulation, and
symptoms of anxiety and depression. The CanCope Study has been
develped and each module individually piloted. We are now preparing for
a randomised, controlled efficacy trial.
CanCope is
currently recruiting and taking expressions of interest.
Find out more at the study website.
For questions or other information,
email: psych.cancope@monash.edu or call/text: +61
404353956.
This clinical
trial is registered ACTRN12620000943943p
with ethics approved by Monash University.
The Sleep, Cancer and Rest (SleepCare)
Trial is as a parallel group, randomised controled efficacy trial to
evaluate individual and combined interventions for sleep and fatigue
during chemotherapy. Individuals undergoing chemotherapy are placed at
an increased risk of sleep-related disturbance and daytime fatigue.
Despite this, sleep concerns among individuals with cancer are often
unrecognised and inadequately managed. The SleepCare Trial aims to
evaluate interventions to address this gap. Project findings will inform
the feasibility and utility of cost-effective interventions for
sustainable integration within routine oncology care. The SleepCare
Trial is a being conducted as part of a collaboration between Monash
University, the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, and Monash Health.
SleepCare is led and conducted by Mr. Jordan Maccora as part of his
PhD.
Find out more at the study website.
For questions or other
information, email: psych.sleepcare@monash.edu.
This clinical trial is registered ACTRN12620001133921
with ethics approved by the Peter MacCallum Cancer
Centre.
The SleepWell Trial is a randomized controlled trial
designed to test interventions we hope may be effective at improving
sleep and reducing fatigue in women with breast cancer while being
feasible for wide spread dissemination. Women with breast cancer
commonly report sleep disruptions and fatigue, particularly during
chemotherapy. SleepWell represents a first step in addressing
this need. SleepWell was conducted as a collaboration between
Monash University and the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre with
recruitment and intervention occurring at the Peter MacCallum Caner
Centre. SleepWell was led and conducted by Ms. Helena Bean as
part of her doctorate. SleepWell was completed in 2020.
For more info, read the Explanatory Statement.
This clinical trial is registered ACTRN12618001255279.
For questions or other
information, email: joshua.wiley@monash.edu.
Many young adults move states or countries to start their university
or college studies. During this time, they face many changes: new
independence from family, moving and living in a new city, and new
courses and studies. All these changes can cause stress. The purpose of
this study is to understand how young adults respond to stress during
these transitions and what helps people manage stress. The
Stress and Health
Study focused on how family experiences, resilience,
behaviours (diet, exercise, sleep), and coping strategies relate to
stress and how people feel. The findings of this study will help us
better understand stress and responses to stress, which we hope can help
us develop interventions to help people manage stress effectively.
SHS completed in 2020.
For more info, read the Explanatory Statement.
For questions or other
information, email: joshua.wiley@monash.edu.
The Diet, Exercise, Stress,
Emotions, Speech, and Sleep study (DESTRESS)
was a 7-day, daily diary study in 135 adults using ecological momentary
assessment to examine behavioural (diet, sleep, physical activity) and
psychological (stress, emotions, psychosocial vulnerabilities) factors.
DESTRESS replicated findings from our previous ACES study and extended
it by examining the daily dynamics of sleep and psychological factors
with diet. A unique feature of DESTRESS was the collection of
qualitative data on stress experiences through brief recorded speech
throughout the day. DESTRESS was completed in 2018. Analyses
from these data are still underway.
For more info, read the Explanatory
Statement.
To learn about
the results, read the Participant
Report.
The Activity, Coping, Emotions,
Stress and Sleep (ACES) study was a 12-day, daily
diary study in 191 adults using ecological momentary assessment to
examine behavioural (sleep, physical activity) and psychological
(stress, emotions, psychosocial vulnerabilities) factors. ACES was able
to break ground and shed light on the daily dynamics between stress and
sleep and sleep and emotions using high quality, objective data.
ACES was completed in 2017. Analyses from these data are still
underway.
For more info,
read the Explanatory
Statement.
To learn about
the results, read the Participant
Report.
NHMRC Investigator Grant: Optimising treatment
to reduce sleep and depression symptoms in cancer: A personalised
medicine approach
Diagnosis and treatment of cancer place an
enormous strain on individuals, with particularly deleterious effects on
sleep and depression. Although multiple evidence-based interventions
exist for both sleep and depression, up to 50% of people do not respond
to first line treatments. Symptom burden can be reduced by optimising
treatment selection, yet traditional, theoretically-driven efforts at
determining who will benefit most from a given treatment have yielded
few results.
My research proposes to use machine learning on
existing treatment trials to build algorithms that use individuals’
characteristics to generate personalised predictions for which of
multiple evidence-based treatments is most likely to result in the
largest symptom reductions. Where gaps emerge in existing trials for
building treatment selection algorithms, over the next five years, my
group also will conduct new, brief sleep and depression trials in cancer
to fill these gaps and enhance and validate algorithms developed on
existing datasets. My dual background in behavioural medicine and
advanced quantitative methods along, a team of five PhD students, and
research positions at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre make me ideally
positioned to conduct this research.
Optimal matching of
individuals to treatments can improve outcomes by reducing the time it
takes to find a treatment that works for an individual. This is
particularly significant in the context of cancer where patients have
limited energy to engage in treatments and the growing number of cancer
patients and survivors tax limited health care resources. Models and
algorithms developed during this fellowship will be disseminated to
stakeholders by deploying them through freely available, easy to use
online web applications.
Approximately one-third of women coping with breast cancer experience
persistent symptoms of depression, pain and fatigue, which are not
normative and are difficult to treat. Emotional approach coping and
expression of emotion is related to fewer and faster recovery from
depression symptoms. However, expression of emotion is inconsistent with
social norms in some cultures. Using visual art-making as a form of
expression and communication within a safe and supportive relationship
may be an effective way for women from cultures where emotion expression
is not normative to approach, process and express their emotions. The
Role of Emotional
Processing in Art
Therapy (REPAT) for breast cancer
palliative care patients study is a randomized controlled trial being
lead by the University of Haifa in Israel. REPAT evaluates the impact of
art making in women who have completed primary treatment for breast
cancer. REPAT also has a focus on mechanisms including detailed
assessments of emotion-regulation and physiological (e.g., cholinergic,
anti-inflammatory processes) mechanisms that may underpin the link
between art making and improvements in outcomes. REPAT also is unique in
explicitly recruiting both Jewish and Arab women allowing a comparison
of cultural differences and comparison of more traditional and
collectivist ethno-cultures.
For more info, visit http://repat.haifa.ac.il/en/.
Over 70% of adolescents in Australia experience insufficient sleep.
Yet, the extent to which the biological clock in the brain plays a role
in cognitive function and academic functioning is currently not
understood. The Circadian, Light,
Adolescence, Sleep, and
School (CLASS) study is a
longitudinal, cohort study lead by Monash University and PI
Prof. Rajaratnam. CLASS uses state-of-the-art measures of the biological
clock, rigorous assessment of light exposure and sophisticated
analytical approaches. CLASS will demonstrate longitudinal relationships
between environmental light exposure, multiple facets of
sleep-wakefulness, and ecologically relevant measures of academic
achievement. The proposed study will identify specific sleep and
circadian markers that are linked to academic performance, and generate
innovative algorithms that predict these associations. Findings from
CLASS can help drive prevention and early intervention programs that use
sleep-wake and light exposure information to improve sleep
quality.
For more info,
see the CLASS
Website.
For questions
or other information, email: base.class@monash.edu.
Adolescents experience naturalistic, recurring sleep restriction
during school terms and periods of unrestricted sleep during school
holidays. However, relatively little is known about the daily dynamics
of sleep and other psychosocial factors, such as affect or cognitive
performance, during these periods. The Study of
Teenage Emotions,
Performance and Sleep
(STEPS) aimed to address this gap by measuring daily
sleep, performance, and affect across two weeks of school term and two
weeks of school holidays in Australian adolescents in Years 11 or 12.
STEPS was lead by Lin Shen as part of her PhD.
The My Year After (MYA) study is a longitudinal, cohort study of 460 women recently diagnosed with breast cancer. Women in the study were followed from shortly after breast cancer diagnosis (on average 2.1 months after diagnosis) for 12 months. The study was focused on identifying changes in depression symptoms over time and predictors of these different responses. While we continue work to identify risk and protective factors, we are actively leveraging what we have learned to build new interventions designed to reduce and prevent depression.
The mission of The COVID-19 Outbreak Public Evaluation
(COPE) Initiative is to assess public attitudes, behaviors, and
beliefs related to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, and
to evaluate the mental and behavioral health consequences of the
pandemic.
The goal is to provide the public a voice through the
collection and dissemination of findings that help shape the design and
delivery of targeted communication and intervention strategies to
improve public health efforts and save lives.
The Behavioral
Medicine Lab is a collaborator on some of the COPE projects.
Find out more at the study website.
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