‘Sleep problems in children with ADHD’

Dr Melissa Mulraney, PhD is a senior lecturer and Head of the Child Mental Health Research Centre at ISN Psychology in Melbourne, Australia. She is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and in the Department of Paediatrics at The University of Melbourne. Dr Mulraney is an Associate Editor for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

Dr Mulraney received her PhD in developmental psychology from Monash University and completed post-doctoral training at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. Dr Mulraney’s main research interests are in ADHD, emotion dysregulation, and sleep. She has authored multiple publications on these topics and is recognised as an emerging leader in the field of ADHD. In 2021 she won both the Florence Levy Emerging Researcher Award awarded by the Australian ADHD Professional Association and the World Federation of ADHD’s Young Scientists’ Award, which she also won in 2019. 

In this presentation Dr Mulraney will give an overview of healthy sleep before discussing what we currently know about sleep difficulties that children with ADHD often experience. The majority of the talk will be dedicated to describing a number of strategies to improve sleep in children with ADHD and will conclude with an overview of the evidence base for these strategies.