Insomnia affects a wide group of people including US soldiers, with nearly 10 percent of our soldiers are on insomnia medication. Recently new treatment methods are being researched to find an alternative to prescribing medications. One such method of treatment is known as Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Cognitive Behavior therapy is also available via online treatment but current studies show that Online Cognitive Behavior Therapy is only half as effective as current standard CBT treatment.
A group of 100 soldiers were studied to research the CBT’s validity and the group’s dependency on prescription medication, they were separated into three groups, one involving physical meetings, the other consisting of internet meetings and the final group were based on communicating through phone conversations. Overall the results proved positive in helping the soldiers cope with their insomnia.
In a similar study using civilians, medication dependency dropped from approximately 87% down to 54%. The importance and effectiveness of treatments such as CBT in insomnia cases is high due to risk factors such as addiction, depression and post dramatic stress disorder. Additionally the side effects of current insomnia medications are just as dangerous, side effects include slowed decision making, reaction time and a reduction in the brains overall ability to process information. These studies may help make CBT more mainstream and accessible to the public.
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Key Points:
- 1Insomnia is a serious issue that can have long lasting negative effects, and therefore it is important that treatment is being researched.
- 2While online CBT is not as effective as traditional/ in person CBT, it still results in improvement regarding insomnia.
- 3Online CBT is a great alternative due to its flexibility and thus ability to cater to individuals with busy lives, such as soldiers trying to juggle family and military needs.
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