Web, videoconference insomnia therapies show promise

Insomnia treatment that's delivered through a Web-based program or videoconference may help people feel less tired during the day, according to a small study from Canada.

Researchers found over half of people who had chronic insomnia at the start of the study no longer had severe difficulty functioning after receiving therapy through one of those methods.

"I think the biggest takeaway is . . . cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for insomnia can be delivered effectively in a variety of formats - not just face to face but also using different technologies and even self-directed," Maxine Holmqvist, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health.

She is an assistant professor at University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.

More than one-quarter of people in the U.S. report not getting enough sleep every now and then, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About one in 10 Americans reports chronic insomnia.

Symptoms of chronic insomnia include regularly having trouble falling asleep, waking up too early in the morning and waking up in the middle of the night. This often results in people feeling tired during the day.

One treatment for chronic insomnia is CBT, which consists of therapist-guided sessions that teach people methods to help them get better sleep. Those sessions include lessons about insomnia, relaxation techniques, ignoring stimuli and creating good sleeping habits.

People who live in rural areas may not have access to such therapy, however.

For people without easily accessible treatment, videoconferencing (also known as telehealth) is sometimes used in Canada to bring together patients and doctors, write the researchers in the journal Sleep Medicine.

There is also some evidence, they write, that CBT can be delivered through the Internet.

For the new study, the researchers recruited 73 adults living in a rural Canadian province and randomly assigned them to either receive CBT through an Internet-based program or through a group videoconference at clinics near their homes.

At the start of the study, all of the participants had insomnia, according to a questionnaire that scores how well a person functions during the day.

After six CBT sessions delivered over six weeks, the researchers found that 55 percent of the telehealth group and about 62 percent of the Web-based treatment group no longer scored high enough on the questionnaire to be considered to have insomnia.

The researchers write that the difference in results between the two delivery methods could have been due to chance. With more people they may be able to say whether one works better than the other.

"Overall, our study suggests that both Web- and telehealth-based treatments of insomnia show promise and are worthy of further development and study," they write.