Insomnia

Insomnia Care at UVM Health

One of the most common sleep disorders, insomnia is a condition that prevents you from falling asleep and/or staying asleep after you go to bed. Whether short term or chronic, lack of sleep can greatly impact your mood, performance at work or school, and overall quality of life.

Sleeping gives your mind and body the time to refuel and reenergize from your day’s activities. Insomnia does the opposite by disrupting your slumber, often leading to excessive daytime drowsiness, fatigue and irritability.

A patient sleeps on a bed hooked up to testing wires.

Why Choose UVM Health?

The experienced insomnia team at University of Vermont Health's comprehensive sleep medicine program is specially trained to diagnose and treat your insomnia so you can get the sleep you need. We are one of the leading insomnia programs in the Northeast, providing highly successful non-medication-based therapies to get you back to sleep again.

We offer:

Deep expertise: Our program uniquely provides you with exceptional care from a clinical psychologist who is board certified in behavioral sleep medicine using evidence-based cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I).
Multidisciplinary team: Many physical and emotional factors may contribute to your insomnia, including other sleep disorders like sleep apnea or narcolepsy as well as stress and anxiety. Our dedicated insomnia experts work closely with physicians trained in neurology, pulmonary disease, otolaryngology (ENT), mental health and pediatrics to provide you with thorough and compassionate care while determining the root causes of your condition.
Personalized care: We design care strategies that take into account your general health, possible causes of your condition, your home and sleep environments, and your lifestyle.

Symptoms of Insomnia

Many adults need seven to eight hours of sleep to get a good night’s rest. A common sleep disorder, insomnia occurs when you can’t get enough high-quality sleep over a period of time. Insomnia can last from days and weeks (short-term) to months (chronic). Insomnia may be caused by stress, a change in time zones or your sleep schedule, poor bedtime habits, an underlying medical or psychiatric condition, or certain medications.

Insomnia symptoms may include:

Difficulty falling asleep, despite being tired
Needing sleeping pills or alcohol to fall asleep
Awakening frequently during the night or lying awake in the middle of the night
Awakening too early in the morning despite not feeling refreshed

Diagnosing Insomnia

If the inability to fall asleep is making it hard for you to function and reducing your quality of life, your provider may refer you to our sleep medicine program’s insomnia service for an evaluation. The diagnostic tests our insomnia experts perform include:

Initial consultation: Discuss your sleep concerns, sleep study results (if available), medical history, home and work environments, family life and lifestyle. This consultation will help us determine if other medical tests are necessary.
Sleep study consultation: Referral to one of our sleep medicine program physicians or nurse practitioners if the cause of your insomnia remains unclear. We use sleep studies to monitor brain activity, eye movements, muscle tone, heart rate and rhythm, and breathing patterns while you sleep.

Insomnia Treatment

There are steps you can take at home to improve your sleep, but sometimes changing your sleep habits can be hard to do on your own or may not fully improve your sleep concerns. At UVM Health, our insomnia team is made up of experienced professionals who work to guide, support and empower you to achieve better sleep.

Sleep Hygiene

In some cases, acute insomnia can be helped by improving your nighttime routine, including:

Waking up at the same time each morning
Avoiding caffeine and alcohol before bed
Winding down with a book or music
Unplugging from screens like your TV, tablet or smartphone

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

An evidenced-based treatment with a long-term success rate of up to 75%, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) focuses on how our thoughts, emotions and behaviors can affect our ability to fall asleep and sleep well. CBT-I has proven highly effective in helping adults and children overcome insomnia without the need for sleep medications.

At UVM Health, an experienced clinical psychologist provides this short-term but long-lasting treatment in four to six personalized sessions. CBT–I may involve the use of several different strategies depending on your particular needs, from managing unhelpful thoughts that keep you up at night to enhancing your physical sleep environment so you can have uninterrupted, peaceful slumber.

We also have deep expertise in treating pediatric patients, ages 11 and up, for insomnia. Our team customizes CBT-I techniques to address specific concerns your child may have about going to sleep, from being afraid of the dark to not being tired enough to sleep at designated bedtimes. We work to help your child to feel safe and sleep independently.

Younger children may also experience some forms of insomnia that make it difficult for themselves — and often their caregivers — to achieve a good night’s rest. We help little ones as young as four months old by using a variety of behavioral methods to improve their sleep.

At UVM Health, the services provided by our expert clinical psychologist are covered by insurance in many cases.