Getting Out of Bed: Using Behavioral Sleep Medicine Strategies to Help your Clients with Depression and Anxiety

This professional webinar provides specific, practical tools to integrate evidence-based insomnia and fatigue strategies into your existing evidence based anxiety and depression protocols.
 
This webinar answers questions such as, “How can I encourage my client to get out of bed in the morning if they have anhedonia?” “What if I want my client to spend less time in bed, but the bed is a place of escape from emotional pain?” “How can I encourage my client to engage in behavioral activation when they believe they cannot do anything until their sleep is “fixed”? “What can I do about rumination or worry in bed?”
When 200 treatment providers were asked which technique they are most likely to use with their clients with insomnia, almost all reported using sleep hygiene as their most likely tool (Lachowski, Carney & Moss, 2013). Unfortunately, sleep hygiene is not a monotherapy supported by evidence (Morin et al., 1999; 2006). So, if sleep hygiene is not an empirically supported therapy, what is?
 
Behavioral sleep medicine offers a range of effective cognitive behavioral techniques for insomnia and fatigue. These cognitive behavioral techniques  can easily and immediately be incorporated into your practice and include stimulus control (Bootzin, 1972; Morin, 1999; 2006), sleep restriction and extension (Morin, 1999; 2006; Spielman et al., 1987), chronobiological interventions (e.g., Harvey, 2015; Spielman et al., 1987) and cognitive behavioral fatigue management (e.g., White et al., 2011). 
 
Effective strategies are needed in those with depression and anxiety: several studies suggest that insomnia predicts the onset of depression and anxiety disorders. Untreated insomnia also predicts poorer treatment outcomes and poorer long-term outcomes for depression and anxiety.
 
Learning objectives

• Explain to integrate behavioral activation with effective insomnia and fatigue techniques
• Leverage the circadian system to increase activation in those with depression
• Design behavioral experiments to challenge sleep-related anxiety