The SHUTi OASIS online insomnia treatment developed here at the School of Medicine can greatly help older adults struggling to sleep, a clinical trial has found.
The trial enrolled more than 300 participants to test the SHUTi technology. After a year, two to three times more study participants showed meaningful sleep improvements than did study participants who received standard patient education online.
This is important because insomnia can be a major problem for older adults. It strikes up to 30% of seniors, more than any other age group. This sleeplessness can be accompanied by depression and an increased risk for falls, among other serious issues.
SHUTi seeks to address this by providing cognitive behavioral therapy, a well-established treatment that retrains people to avoid the thoughts and behaviors that contribute to sleeplessness.
Importantly, participants found the SHUTi technology easy to use.
“This is the first digital health program for insomnia specifically for adults over age 55. In our trial, almost a third of participants were 70 years old or older,” said UVA’s Lee Ritterband, PhD, the creator of SHUTi and the director of UVA Health’s Center for Behavioral Health & Technology. “Not only did we find that this works, but we found that older adults were able to do this with very little, if any, additional help.”
The trial results, Ritterband and his colleagues say, offer “compelling evidence” for the effectiveness of online cognitive behavioral therapy for helping older adults get a good night's rest.
“There is a critical need for behavioral interventions that are easily accessible and highly scalable. And, as our population ages, we must have treatments that work for older adults,” Ritterband said. “Given how many people experience insomnia, particularly as they get older, SHUTi OASIS and programs like it are going to be increasingly important for addressing widespread sleep difficulties in an efficient and cost-effective way.”