Telehealth can be effective for delivering cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) – and is not inferior to in-person treatment, new research suggests.
Results from a study of 60 adults with insomnia disorder showed no significant between-group difference at 3-month follow-up between those assigned to receive in-person CBT-I and those assigned to telehealth CBT-I in regard to change in score on the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI).
In addition, both groups showed significant change compared with a wait-list group, indicating that telehealth was not inferior to the in-person mode of delivery, the investigators note.
Dr. Philip Gehrman
“The take-home message is that patients with insomnia can be treated with cognitive-behavioral treatment for insomnia by video telehealth without sacrificing clinical gains,” study investigator Philip Gehrman, PhD, department of psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, told this news organization.
“This fits with the broader telehealth literature that has shown that other forms of therapy can be delivered this way without losing efficacy, so it is likely that telehealth is a viable option for therapy in general,” he said.
The findings were published online August 24 in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.
Telehealth ‘explosion’
Although CBT-I is the recommended intervention for insomnia, “widespread implementation of CBT-I is limited by the lack of clinicians who are trained in this treatment,” the investigators note. There is a “need for strategies to increase access, particularly for patients in areas with few health care providers.”
Telehealth is a promising technology for providing treatment, without the necessity of having the patient and the practitioner in the same place. There has been an “explosion” in its use because of restrictions necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the “rapid deployment of telehealth interventions did not allow time to assess this approach in a controlled manner,” so it is possible that this type of communication might reduce treatment efficacy, the investigators note.
Previous research suggests that telehealth psychotherapeutic treatments in general are not inferior to in-person treatments. One study showed that CBT-I delivered via telehealth was noninferior to in-person delivery. However, that study did not include a control group.
“I have been doing telehealth clinical work for about 10 years – so way before the pandemic pushed everything virtual,” Dr. Gehrman said. “But when I would talk about my telehealth work to other providers, I would frequently get asked whether the advantages of telehealth (greater access to care, reduced travel costs) came at a price of lower efficacy.”
Dr. Gehrman said he suspected that telehealth treatment was just as effective and wanted to formally test this impression to see whether he was correct.
The investigators randomly assigned 60 adults (mean age, 32.72 years; mean ISI score, 17.0; 65% women) with insomnia disorder to in-person CBT-I (n = 20), telehealth-delivered CBT-I (n = 21), or to a wait-list control group (n = 19). For the study, insomnia disorder was determined on the basis of DSM-5 criteria.
Most participants had completed college or postgraduate school (43% and 37%, respectively) and did not have many comorbidities.
The primary outcome was change on the ISI. Other assessments included measures of depression, anxiety, work and social adjustment, fatigue, and medical outcomes. Participants also completed a home unattended sleep study using a portable monitor to screen participants for obstructive sleep apnea.
Both types of CBT-I were delivered over 6 to 8 weekly sessions, with 2-week and 3-month post-treatment follow-ups.
An a priori margin of -3.0 points was used in the noninferiority analysis, and all analyses were conducted using mixed-effects models, the authors explain.