The benefit of the online strategy, of course, is that it can work for people who don't have access to face-to-face therapy. Vincent's study, on the other hand, found that 35% of those who received online treatment reported that they were "much" or "very much" improved, compared with 50% of those who received in-person group therapy using the same behavioral-cognitive approach at Vincent's sleep clinic at the University of Manitoba in Canada. While prior studies have shown that online therapy can help alleviate insomnia, little research has compared it directly with other approaches.
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They were also allowed to download audio clips of a sleep therapist and an actor in a staged one-on-one session and listen to them on their iPods. (One of the worst things you can do when you can't fall asleep is lie there and dwell on the consequences of not getting enough sleep.) Participants in her study were asked to keep digital sleep diaries and practice the techniques that were demonstrated onscreen.
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I think it motivates them more," she says.īased on cognitive-behavioral-therapy techniques, Vincent's virtual therapy combines videos, text and audio clips to teach the sleepless everything about good sleep hygiene, from how to relax the body before getting into bed to how not to stress out when you fail to doze off right away. "People like to have autonomy in solving problems. "There may be some unique things that you get from an Internet program, like the feeling that you are really in the driver's seat," says the study's author, clinical psychologist Norah Vincent, who adds that many of the 40 participants who completed her multimedia program reported both better sleep quality and less daytime fatigue than did a control group. And there's growing evidence that online therapy really works: in the new Sleep study, 81% of participants who completed a five-week, online program for insomnia reported improvement in sleep.
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Major health insurers like Blue Cross and Aetna even offer Web-based anti-insomnia programs for free (you can check out the retail versions at or for as little as $20). ( Read "Can a Sleep Disorder Predict Parkinson's?")Ĭompared with face-to-face counseling or medical treatments, online therapies are typically simpler and less expensive. Web-based treatments have emerged for all kinds of bad habits and disorders, such as overeating, smoking, depression and insomnia. Now a new study in the journal Sleep suggests a surprising treatment for the sleepless: the Internet. Others seek medical treatment or psychological therapy to get to sleep, while the rest of us accept our nocturnal tossing and turning as just another of life's unavoidable nuisances and gulp an extra cup of coffee the next morning to compensate.īut despite our best efforts, about 10% of Americans still suffer from persistent insomnia (defined as difficulty initiating or maintaining sleep) namely, falling asleep or being functionally impaired by sleepiness during the day and researchers continue to search for its causes and cure.
To combat wakefulness, Americans filled more than 50 million prescriptions in 2008 for sleeping pills like Ambien and spent more than $600 million on over-the-counter sleep-inducing supplements such as melatonin and valerian root. But for the estimated 30% of American adults who suffer from at least occasional insomnia, nightfall is no guarantee of slumber. Follow a decent night's sleep shouldn't be such a crapshoot.
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