Layla Sadek is a PhD student at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King's College London. Layla completed her BSc in Psychology at King’s College London in 2024, followed by an MSc in Clinical Mental Health Sciences at UCL in 2025. 

During her studies, she worked on the CannTeen project, which examined longitudinal associations between cannabis use and mental health in adolescents and young adults (first-author manuscript currently in preparation for publication). She also worked as a Research Assistant in UCL’s Anxiety, Self-Image and Mood (AIM) Lab and has clinical experience as a psychologist at a psychiatric hospital in Egypt.

Her PhD project, “IMPACT: Informing Interventions for Adolescent Cannabis Use Disorder: Predictors, Contexts and Consequences of Early-Teenage Problematic Cannabis Use,” focuses on understanding problematic cannabis use and treatment provision among early adolescents in the UK.

A key aim is to translate these findings, with input from young people and clinicians, into best-practice recommendations for adolescent cannabis use disorder treatment. Her supervisors are Dr Will Lawn, Dr Nicola Kalk and Dr Tim Meynen.

Research interests

• Adolescent mental health
• Addiction science
• Cannabis use and cannabis use disorder
• Treatment and intervention research
• Psychiatric epidemiology