Behavioral treatment of insomnia: Treatment outcome and the relevance of medical and psychiatric morbidity

Recently we undertook a case series study and found that behavior therapy f or insomnia was effective as plied in the clinic setting and that the findi ngs were similar to those in the "clinical trial" literature. In the presen t study, we evaluate a second set of case series data to assess (1) the rep licability of our original findings, (2) if our treatment outcomes are stat istically comparable to those in the literature, and (3) if medical and psy chiatric morbidity influence treatment outcome. It was found that patients who completed four or more sessions of cognitive behavioral therapy for ins omnia (CBT) were, on average, 33% improved. This average corresponded to a 56% reduction in wake time after sleep onset, a 34% reduction in sleep late ncy, a 29% increase in total sleep time, and a 13% decrease in number of aw akenings per night. These findings are not significantly different from tho se reported in literature for both CBT and pharmacotherapy interventions. M edical and psychiatric comorbidity did not influence treatment outcome.