Psycho‐educational CBT insomnia workshops for the general public: an audit of access and clinical outcomes

Abstract

Insomnia is highly prevalent and has severe negative consequences, yet help‐seeking remains low. Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT‐I) is an evidence‐based treatment, which targets factors that perpetuate insomnia over time. Using a format developed by Brown and colleagues (1999) of offering self‐referral psycho‐educational workshops for the community, one‐day CBT‐I workshops were run on a routine basis, throughout 2007, for the general public. These intensive workshop days were led by two clinical/counselling psychologists, and attracted a large number of self‐referrals. Participants completed a battery of measures at the introductory and follow up phases of the workshop programme including measures of insomnia, anxiety and depression. Of the 60 people who self‐referred, the large majority were women, 58% had clinical insomnia as indicated by the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) and 75% had clinical levels of depression as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; scores over 10). At the follow‐up stage, there were significant improvements on all measures, and there was a high degree of participant satisfaction with the workshops. Such large‐scale interventions offer an important, potentially cost‐effective means of disseminating evidence‐based psychological interventions to large numbers of people.

Citation

Prytys, M., Whittinger, N., Coventry, S., Idusohan, H. and Brown, J. (2010), "Psycho‐educational CBT insomnia workshops for the general public: an audit of access and clinical outcomes", Journal of Public Mental Health, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 8-15. https://doi.org/10.5042/jpmh.2010.0159