Time to Step Up to Stepped Care: A Novel Strategy for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia in Chronic Spinal Pain - a Randomized Controlled Trial
Chronic spinal pain (i.e., chronic neck pain and chronic low back pain) are highly prevalent, and are known for their immens personal and socio-economic burden. Chronic spinal pain is impacted by many aspects, and in this story, insomnia plays an important role. Clinical insomnia symptoms are very common in people suffering from chronic spinal pain, and the presence of insomnia is known to aggravate the chronic spinal pain symptoms. While research shows that tackling insomnia in these patients is helpful for these patients, the availability of cognitive behavioral therapy, the golden standard to treat insomnia, is unfortunately extremely limited. Therefore this study aims to investigate whether a stepped care approach to cognitive behavioral therapy is a solution to this problem.
• Insomniacs (18-65y/o), with an Insomnia Severity Index score ≥15 (i.e., at least moderate insomnia) suffering from CSP, defined as non-specific spinal pain of at least 3 month's duration, currently seeking care for CSP, with a pain severity of ≥3/10 on the Brief Pain Inventory are recruited. In the absence of other intrin-sic sleep disorders and shift work, insomnia is defined as \>30 minutes sleep latency and/or minutes awake after sleep onset for \>3 days/week for \>3 months.