How did web-based cognitive therapy work for insomnia?

A new article published online by JAMA Psychiatry reports that adults assigned to receive the fully automated and interactive web-based Sleep Healthy Using the Internet (SHUTi) intervention had improved sleep compared with those adults just given access to a patient education website with information about insomnia.

Difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep is a common health problem with medical, psychiatric and financial ramifications.

The clinical trial by Lee M. Ritterband, Ph.D., of the University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, evaluated the efficacy of the intervention from nine weeks to one year and included 303 adults. The article includes study limitations.

"Internet-delivered CBT-I [cognitive behavior therapy for insomnia] provides a less expensive, scalable treatment option that could reach previously unimaginable numbers of people. Future studies are necessary to determine who may be best served by this type of intervention and how the next steps of dissemination should occur," the study concludes.