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A structured, time-limited intervention is effective in assisting chronic users of benzodiazepine medication to discontinue or reduce their use of medication. The addition of cognitive behavior therapy alleviates insomnia, but sleep improvements may become noticeable only after several months of benzodiazepine abstinence.

IMPORTANCE Despite evidence of efficacious psychological and pharmacologic therapies for insomnia, there is little information about what first-line treatment should be and how best to proceed when initial treatment fails.OBJECTIVE To evaluate the comparative efficacy of 4 treatment sequences involving psychological and medication therapies for insomnia and examine the moderating effect of psychiatric disorders on insomnia outcomes. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTSIn a sequential multiple-assignment randomized trial, patients were assigned to first-stage therapy involving either behavioral therapy (BT; n = 104) or zolpidem (zolpidem; n = 107), and patients who did not remit received a second treatment involving either medication (zolpidem or trazodone) or psychological therapy (BT or cognitive therapy [CT]). The study took place at

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This study aimed to assess the efficacy of a minimal intervention focusing on hypnotic discontinuation and cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT) for insomnia. Fifty-three adult chronic users of hypnotics were randomly assigned to an 8-week hypnotic taper program, used alone or combined with a self-help CBT. Weekly hypnotic use decreased in both conditions, from a nearly nightly use at baseline to less than once a week at posttreatment. Nightly dosage (in lorazepam equivalent) decreased from 1.67 mg to 0.12 mg. Participants who received CBT improved their sleep efficiency by 8%, whereas those who did not remained stable. Total wake time decreased by 52 min among CBT participants and increased by 13 min among those receiving the taper schedule alone. Total sleep time remained stable throughout withdrawal in both CBT and taper conditions. The present findings suggest that a systematic withdrawal schedule might be sufficient in helping chronic users stop their hypnotic medication. The addition of a self-help treatment focusing on insomnia, a readily available and cost-effective alternative to individual psychotherapy, produced greater sleep improvement.

Study objectives:To document the long-term sleep outcomes at 12 and 24 months after patients with chronic insomnia were treated with cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), either singly or combined with zolpidem medication. Methods: Participants were 160 adults with chronic insomnia. They were first randomized for a six-week acute treatment phase involving CBT alone or CBT combined with nightly zolpidem, and randomized for a six-month extended treatment phase involving CBT, no additional treatment, CBT combined with zolpidem as needed, or CBT with zolpidem tapered. This paper reports results of the 12-and 24-month follow-ups on the main outcome measures derived from the Insomnia Severity Index and sleep diaries. Results: Clinical improvements achieved 6 months following the end of treatment were well-maintained in all four conditions, with insomnia remission rates ranging from 48% to 74% at the 12-month follow-up, and from 44% to 63% at the 24-month follow-up. Participants receiving CBT with zolpidem taper in the extended treatment phase had significantly better results than those receiving CBT with continued zolpidem as needed. The magnitude of improvements on sleep diary parameters was similar between conditions, with a slight advantage for the CBT with zolpidem taper condition. The addition of extended CBT did not alter the long-term outcome over improvements obtained during the initial 6-week CBT. Conclusions:The results suggest that CBT for insomnia, when delivered alone or in combination with medication, produce durable sleep improvements up to two years after completion of treatment. These long-term results indicate that even if a combined CBT plus medication approach provide an added benefit immediately after treatment, extending CBT while tapering medication produce better sustained improvements compared to continued use of medication as needed.

Objectives To examine the speed and trajectory of changes in sleep/wake parameters during short-term treatment of insomnia with cognitive–behavioral therapy (CBT) alone versus CBT combined with medication; and to explore the relationship between early treatment response and post-treatment recovery status. Methods Participants were 160 adults with insomnia (mean age, 50.3 years; 97 women, 63 men) who underwent a six-week course of CBT, singly or combined with 10 mg zolpidem nightly. The main dependent variables were sleep onset latency, wake after sleep onset, total sleep time, sleep efficiency, and sleep quality, derived from sleep diaries completed daily by patients throughout the course of treatment. Results Participants treated with CBT plus medication exhibited faster sleep improvements as evidenced during the first week of treatment compared to those receiving CBT alone. Optimal sleep improvement was reached on average after only one week for the combined treatment compared to two to three weeks for CBT alone. Early treatment response did not reliably predict post-treatment recovery status. Conclusions Adding medication to CBT produces faster sleep improvement than CBT alone. However, the magnitude of early treatment response is not predictive of final response after the six-week therapy. Additional research is needed to examine mechanisms involved in this early treatment augmentation effect and its impact on long-term outcome.