Staff Perspective: Research Suggests Sleep May Play an Important Role in PTSD Treatment

Staff Perspective: Research Suggests Sleep May Play an Important Role in PTSD Treatment

Everyone knows that sleep is vital to an individual's well-being. However, new research is suggesting that sleep is also important to the effective treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Work by researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine is leading them to believe that "poor sleep may impair the ability of an individual to fully benefit from exposure-based PTSD treatments, which are the gold standard of interventions."

This may be even more important, due to the fact that hypervigilance and insomnia are frequently observed as symptoms of PTSD. If Service members and Veterans are unable to get a good night's sleep, these symptoms may make it more difficult to treat the underlying cause of PTSD.

You can read the whole article here: http://psychcentral.com/news/2014/08/31/new-research-shows-sleep-critical-to-effective-ptsd-treatment/74318.html. For more information about treating insomnia, visit the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) training page here or sign up for our upcoming online CBT-I training here.