David Farnor | On 25, Jan 2021

Daisy Maskell will explore insomnia in a new BBC Three documnetary.

For as long as she can remember, Kiss FM’s 23-year-old breakfast radio host has lived with insomnia – surviving with very little sleep and being awake until the very early hours of the morning. And she’s not alone. According to research by the NHS, hospital admissions due to sleep disorders have doubled among young people over the past seven years, and the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the issue further still.

In research conducted by Kings College London on a cross-section of 2,500 people across the UK, half of 16 to 24 year-olds stated that they were sleeping significantly fewer hours than they had been prior to lockdown, in comparison to a third of those aged 35 and older.

In this hour-long documentary, Daisy will dig deep into the roots and causes of her own insomnia. She will meet with experts to get to the cause of her sleep disorder and there will be revealing and emotional insights into her struggle with her own mental health along the way. She will look at treatments and cures, explore why thousands of other young people in the UK suffer from insomnia, meeting with young people up and down the country.

Daisy says: “I’m so excited to be making my first documentary with the BBC on a subject that I, like many others, have been affected by: insomnia. This sleep disorder has impacted much of my adult life and so this film will follow my own journey and that of other sufferers, tracing its origins to discover what really goes on while the rest of the world is sleeping.”

Fiona Campbell, Controller, BBC Three, says: “We’re really looking forward to welcoming Daisy to BBC Three for this film which is a really important look at insomnia. We know it is a growing problem among our audience and we hope this documentary helps to shed some light on the issue.”

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