Behaviour Therapy for DIMS: Comparison of Three Treatment Procedures with Follow-up

Abstract

Forty patients suffering from persistent psychophysiological Disorders of Initiating and Maintaining Sleep (DIMS) were assigned to one of the following groups: (1) EMG-biofeedback training; (2) cognitive modification treatment, combining paradoxical instructions, cognitive restructuring and thought stopping; (3) stimulus control and progressive relaxation treatment; (4) waiting list (control). Each active treatment consisted of six sessions over a period of 2 weeks. After treatment, the patients in the three treatment groups showed shorter sleep onset latency (37%), shorter wake time after sleep onset (50%), and more positive evaluations of sleep quality and restedness on awakening in the morning. The waiting-list group did not show any changes. Benefits were maintained and further increased during the 1 and 3 year follow-ups. Results did not suggest substantial differences, among the three treatments, in amount and/or stability of benefits. The 3 year follow-up revealed seven failures, as against 23 successes. The initial variables differentiating the failures were shorter sleep time and higher scores on the P scale of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 37 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.