Nurse-Delivered Sleep Restriction Therapy Improves Insomnia in Primary Care Practice

Guidelines recommend cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as first-line treatment for insomnia, but access to CBT is limited, and patients with insomnia often receive only sleep hygiene advice or hypnotic medications. Sleep restriction therapy (SRT), a component of CBT, involves systematically restricting time in bed to consolidate and regularize sleep. SRT delivered alone is simpler than full CBT, has been effective in small trials, and might be useful in general clinical practice.

Investigators in England recruited 600 patients with insomnia disorder from 35 general practices and randomized them to four ≈20-minute sessions of SRT delivered by primary care nurses plus a sleep hygiene booklet or to the sleep hygiene booklet alone. Nurses recei…