Vivi is currently on the final year of her PhD on "Clinical Psychology of Intellectual Disabilities" investigating sleep in adults with intellectual disabilities. She was the successful candidate for the Tizard Centre's scholorship and in the past, has acted as an editor assistant for the Tizard Learning Disability Review.

Vivi has also been involved in various projects at the Tizard Centre (ie Effectiveness for CBT for people with Asperger syndrome and social anxiety with Prof Glyn Murphy) and for the last two years has been supervising empirical and non-empirical projects carried out by postgraduate students.

In her post as a Research Assistant, Vivi is working on a new project "Effectiveness of social care for ex-offenders with learning disabilities" funded by the School for Social Care Research alongside Prof Glynis Murphy, Dr Rachel Forrester-Jones, Dr Nick Gore and Dr Jeni Beecham.

Vivi has also been teaching research methods on the Masters programmes in intellectual and developmental disabilities for the past three years.  She has taught both the statistical and non-statistical options and has received excellent feedback from students. She is also teaching sporadically on some of the undergraduate modules.         

 

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Triantafyllopoulou, P., Wiggs, L., Bunce, L. (2010). Sleep difficulties in young adults with a learning disability: their own and their parents’ perception of   sleep. Special Issue: Abstracts of the Third International Conference of IASSID-Europe. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities. 23(5), 519

Triantafyllopoulou, P., Murphy, G.H., McGill, P. (2012) Carer's views of sleep disorders in adults with intellectual disabilities. Abstracts of the 14th World Congress of IASSIDD, Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 56, 671

 

 

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Current projects

• Carers' views of sleep disorders in adults with intellectual disabilities. This project is part of Vivi's PhD and its aim is to identify the most common sleep problems that carers believe adults with ID tend to experience; to investigate whether the degree of ID affects sleep problems and finally to look at whether the carer's views of the individuals' challenging behaviours correlate with their sleep problems.
• Psychological sleep treatment for sleep problems in adults with intellectual disabilities. This project is also part of Vivi's PhD and received funding from the Kent Health Strategic Research Development Fund. This is a randomised controlled trial in which psychological treatment for sleep problems for adults with intellectual disabilities will be offered and the efficacy of such psychological sleep treatment techniques will be assessed by comparing outcome for the treated group to the control group. Any changes in the adult's daytime behaviour in relation to the treatment will also be assessed.
• Effectiveness of social care for ex-offenders with learning disabilities; a School for Social Care funded research project with Prof Glynis Murphy, Dr Rachel Forrester-Jones, Dr Nick Gore and Dr Jeni Beecham. The project will select people screened positive for learning disabilities in prison and follow them up in the Community to assess their progress and to evaluate the effectiveness and cost of social care input.
• Effectiveness for CBT for people with Asperger syndrome and social anxiety. This is an NIHR funded project with Prof Glynis Murphy. The aim of the project is to find out whether or not psychological treatments for anxiety can be adapted and used to successfully treat the anxiety experienced by adults with Aspergers syndrome.

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Vivi has provided consultancy on psychological sleep interventions and awareness of sleep problems in people with learning disabilities to schools and parents of children/adults with intellectual disabilities.

 

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