S9 Ep6: Why sleep is at the core of children's mental health - Mind the Kids podcast

S9 Ep6: Why sleep is at the core of children's mental health - Mind the Kids podcast

June 17, 2026 · 26 min · Season 9 · Episode 6

About this episode

This episode discusses the critical role of sleep in children's mental health, featuring research findings on sleep problems and their associations with emotional and behavioral difficulties.

In this episode of Mind the Kids, the podcast from the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health (ACAMH), host Dr. Clara Faria — academic clinical fellow in child psychiatry — is joined by Alina Marinca , PhD student in Psychological Medicine at Queen Mary University of London and clinical psychologist, whose research is funded by the London Interdisciplinary School of Science Doctoral Training Partnership. Alina shares findings from her JCPP Advances paper ‘Sleep disturbance as a transdiagnostic marker of children's mental health difficulties: A network analysis of item-level associations between different types of sleep problems and different behavioural and emotional symptoms'. The study draws on data from the Development of Emotional Resilience observational cohort — a school-based sample of over 500 primary school children aged 7 to 12 from East London, one of the most ethnically diverse and economically deprived urban cohorts in UK child mental health research. Using network analysis — a powerful statistical approach that maps relationships between symptoms simultaneously — the study examines how specific sleep problems relate to emotional difficulties (anxiety and…

People in this episode

Host: Dr. Clara Faria

Guest: Alina Marinca

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Queen Mary University of London, London Interdisciplinary School of Science, Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health

Books & works: Sleep disturbance as a transdiagnostic marker of children's mental health difficulties: A network analysis of item-level associations between different types of sleep problems and different behavioural and emotional symptoms

Places: East London, UK

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