Psychiatrist and senior researcher at GGZ inGeest and Amsterdam UMC, Hein van Marle receives a 300,000 euro grant from the Dutch Brain Foundation to improve sleep in patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). With an online sleep intervention Van Marle aims to both reduce BPD complaints and improve sleep quality.
Online sleep intervention
BPD is a severe psychiatric disorder with emotion dysregulation at its core, resulting in affective instability and self-damaging behavior. From a neuroscience perspective, sleep plays a crucial role in emotion regulation and emotional memory. BPD patients often suffer from severe sleep disturbances. In this sleep project, Van Marle will test whether treating sleep problems with an online sleep intervention prior to standard BPD treatment will result in less BPD complaints as well as better sleep. The sleep intervention is thought to sort its effect both through a direct effect on emotion regulation and a synergistic effect on the following BPD treatment (better retention and internalization of the treatment result).
Collaboration
Van Marle will team up with a several other recently initiated projects in and outside Amsterdam UMC and GGZ inGeest that aim to improve sleep in different psychiatric disorders. Prof. dr. Annemieke van Straten en prof. dr. Eus van Someren are direct collaborators in the project.
Previous grants of Van Marle
With a previously awarded VENI grant (ZonMW) and a NARSAD Young Investigator Grant Van Marle investigated whether treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder can be augmented by manipulating traumatic memories during post-treatment sleep (TMR-TRAUMA study).