Online Treatment May Help Insomniacs

Online Treatment May Help Insomniacs



You can do almost anything on the Internet these days. What about getting a good night’s sleep?

It might be possible, some researchers say. Web-based programs to treat insomnia are proliferating, and two small but rigorous studies suggest that online applications based on cognitive behavioral therapy can be effective.

“Fifteen years ago, people would have thought it was crazy to get therapy remotely,” said Bruce Wampold, a professor of counseling psychology at the University of Wisconsin. “But as we do more and more things electronically, including have social relationships, more therapists have come to believe that this can be an effective way to deliver services to some people.”

The first controlled study of an online program for insomnia was published in 2004. But the results were hard to interpret, because they showed similar benefits for those who used the program and those in the control group. The two new studies, from researchers in Virginia and in Canada, advance the evidence that such programs can work.

In the Virginia study, called SHUTi, patients enter several weeks of sleep diaries, and the program calculates a window of time during which they are allowed to sleep. Patients limit the time they spend in bed to roughly the hours that they have actually been sleeping.

The goal is to consolidate sleep, then gradually expand its duration — the same technique that would be used in face-to-face therapy, said Lee Ritterband, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, who developed the program.

Stella Parolisi, 65, a registered nurse in Virginia and a patient in the study, said sticking to the restricted sleep schedule was hard, “but toward the end, it started to pay off.”

“Before, if I was exhausted, I would try to get to bed earlier and earlier, which was the wrong thing,” she said. “It just gave me more time to toss and turn.”

But after using the program, she began to sleep for at least one four-hour stretch a night.

[able1]

Interesting but not sure I see the legal relevance.