Lancet Digital Health: New treatments for insomnia can improve sleep and reduce sleep drug dependence.

A strange phenomenon is that as society continues to evolve, more and more people are sleeping badly and unable to sleep.
, about 27 percent of the world's population is suffering from insomnia, while in China, nearly 300 million people have sleep disorders, and eight out of every 10 insomniacs are under the age of 35.
Due to the lack of understanding of the disease, less than 40% of patients in China seek medical assistance, and treatment methods continue to follow the traditional drug treatment, the international mainstream cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT-1, through talk to help patients clear the problem) because of the high cost, the shortage of professional doctors, can not be popularized.
, a recent Study published in The Lancet-Digital Health points the way for the majority of insomniacs to improve their sleep.
A team of researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology has found for the first time that digital cognitive behavioural therapy (dCBT-1) conducted online not only reduces the severity of insomnia-related symptoms, but also helps reduce patients' dependence on sleep medications and improves their physical and mental health.
Previous studies have shown that dCBT-1 helps improve sleep and reduce depressive symptoms, but these studies lack evidence that the therapy is generally effective in people of different ages and do not compare dCBT-1 with other sleep therapies.
to compensate for these deficiencies, the researchers conducted a randomized parallel controlled trial (RCT) in Norway, comparing dCBT-I with the therapeutic effects of online patient education on sleep.
between February 26, 2016 and July 1, 2018, researchers set up a website dedicated to the experiment, screening subjects through a fully automated program and conducting online interventions for target groups.
, screening criteria include an insomnia severity index (ISI) of more than 12 points, no potential health condition and guaranteed completion of the test, and so on.
In the end, 1,721 participants were randomly assigned to the dCBT-1 (868) and patient education groups (853), with an average age of 45 years (interval 18-90), nearly 70 per cent (1,167) of the participants being women, and 62 per cent (1074) married or cohabiting.
66 percent (1,123) of the 1,701 participants with available data reported sleep problems for six years or more.
for nine weeks, during which participants were asked to complete daily questionnaires about sleep quality and improvement.
analysis of the information, the researchers found that the efficacy of dCBT-1 was more significant.
From the ISI score, the dCBT-1 group score dropped from the initial 19.2 to 10.4, which is equivalent to the transition from moderate insomnia to "subclinical insomnia", and the patient education group score dropped from 19.6 to 15.2, still in a moderate insomnia state.
, 38 percent of the dCBT-1 group met the insomnia relief criteria after treatment, while only 8 percent of the patient education group met the criteria, a difference of nearly five times.
addition, dCBT-1 therapy helped participants improve in more ways.
treatment, participants in the dCBT-1 group had a 49 percent lower use of insomnia drugs and a 40 percent lower fatigue level than the patient education group.
this is the first large-scale, fully automated dCBT-I trial to demonstrate that the treatment is effective in reducing nighttime and daytime disorders associated with insomnia and reducing people's use and dependence on sleep medications.
by changing behavior, this effective, inexpensive treatment will help more insomniacs feel better about the night again.
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