A controlled comparative investigation of psychological treatments for chronic sleep-onset insomnia

Abstract

Seventy, GP-referred, sleep-onset insomniacs were randomly assigned to either progressive relaxation, stimulus control, paradoxical intention, placebo or no treatment control groups. Following baseline assessment of sleep pattern and quality subjects received 8 weeks of treatment, comprising 4 weeks under counterdemand and 4 weeks under positive demand instruction to control for demand characteristics and expectancy effects. A further 14 patients were allocated consecutively to a tailored therapy condition as a development of the main study. Measures of treatment process and outcome were obtained from self-report instruments validated against objective monitoring via the `Somtra