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National Health Snooze

Insomnia treatment on NHS could give you an extra hour’s sleep a night

By Kate Foster Scottish Health Editor

ITS effects can be devastating, leaving sufferers constantly tired and unable to function or concentrate properly throughout the day.

But now a treatment for insomnia that can help people sleep for an extra seven hours a week – an extra hour a night – is being made available on the NHS in Scotland.

The therapy, called Sleepio, involves an online course that tracks patients’ sleeping patterns and provides personalised plans to help them rest.

The Scottish Government is backing the programme, which has gone through 12 trials, along with an app called Daylight that helps to tackle anxiety.

When five health boards tested the two digital support packages in October last year, they found 70 per cent of users worried less and gained an average of seven hours extra sleep per week.

Poor sleep affects up to a third of people, putting them at risk of reduced work performance and impaired functioning and focus.

Drugs to treat insomnia can have side-effects such as drowsiness.

Now the Government is launching the Sleepio and Daylight programmes nationally.

They can be downloaded as apps or accessed with computers. A typical six-week course involves answering questions about lifestyle, with personalised tips on how to avoid problems, such as a racing mind, with cognitive behavioural therapy techniques and relaxation.

Users are required to keep a sleep diary so they can monitor their progress.

Sleepio users have the option to complete a course of sleep training lessons, which adjust according to the information on sleep patterns logged by the patient.

Daylight assesses users’ anxiety and offers cognitive behavioural therapy approaches to addressing it. It helps people break anxious reactions to specific events, such as an email arriving, by changing the way they think and behave, breaking fears into parts such as thoughts, feelings and actions.

The Government is spending £380,000 in this financial year to provide Sleepio and Daylight across the country.

Patients can be referred by their GP practice or log into the Sleepio website and access it for free.

Sleepio and Daylight are provided by Big Health UK, an organisation ‘charting the future of digital medicine’ with a mission of getting ‘millions back to good mental health’.

Mental Wellbeing and Social Care minister Kevin Stewart said: ‘Digital technologies have massive potential to help people manage and support their mental health in a way that feels right for them.’

‘Charting future of digital medicine’

Little John

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