Sleep Insomnia Program
Are you having sleep difficulties? Do you have a hard time falling asleep, staying asleep or both? Do you wake up too early? Sleep difficulties can significantly interfere with your day, functioning and overall well-being. Thankfully, there is an effective treatment that can help.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for insomnia, or CBT-i is a short, evidence-based structured program that helps people identify and change thoughts and behaviours about sleep that can cause or worsen sleep problems. Effective sleep habits backed by science are taught that help to promote healthy, restful sleep.
The program is structured into 5-6 sessions and tailored to your specific sleep issues and concerns:
Session 1: Clinical Assessment
This session involves questionnaires and a sleep interview, where the clinician administered a lengthy sleep history questionnaire to determine the nature of the patients’ sleep issue and their qualifications for undergoing an insomnia program.
Session 2: Thinking Differently About Sleep (Cognitive Component)
This session starts with a discussion of how sleep works, and the nature of the processes that govern when we should be awake and when we should be asleep. Learning about sleep helps us understand healthy sleep and starts us on the journey to thinking about sleep differently through positive sleep thoughts.
Session 3: Acting Differently Towards Sleep (Behavioural Component)
Building on concepts from the previous session, a patient learns about the pitfalls of sleep medications and when they are appropriately indicated. The patient takes further steps to act differently towards their sleep by adopting a new sleep schedule based on their knowledge of how sleep works combined with the data from their sleep diary.
Session 4: Relaxation, Strategies to Help Fall Asleep (Relaxation, and Reducing Sleep Onset Latency )
This sessions stresses the importance of relaxation, and offers methods to help patients that suffer from a disorder of initiating sleep or maintaining sleep following an awakening. Patients learn the importance of being able to enter a relaxed state, and learn some methodologies that can help achieve this.
Session 5-6: Sleep Hygiene and Relapse Prevention
The final sessions of the program are geared to promote healthy sleep hygiene. Patients learn about different factors that can influence sleep positively or negatively, such as exercise and temperature. A review of the program completes the program, with an eye towards relapse prevention.
Does CBT-i Work?
70% to 80% of patients with insomnia experience improvement with CBT-i (Trauer et. al, 2015). Benefits include less time to fall asleep, more time spent asleep, and waking up less during sleep. As CBT-i is a skills-based treatment that can be used repeatedly, as required, the results are often maintained over time.
Our CBT-i Sleep Insomnia Program is administered by a certified Sleep Specialist and Registered Psychotherapist.
