Gregg Jacobs Treating Insomnia Experiment Jacobs and his colleagues report much better success in treating insomnia when a combination of behavioral techniques is used rather than any one technique by itself. Research participants who had serious difficulty falling asleep were told to try the following strategies:

1) Sleep Restriction: do not spend more than seven hours in bed or stay in bed more than an hour beyond your average sleeping time. Avoid naps, and arise at the same time every morning, including weekends.

2) Stimulus Control: Go to bed only when sleepy, and use the bed only for sleep or relaxing activities. If you cannot fall asleep within 20 minutes, stop trying and do something relaxing until you feel sleepy again.

3) Relaxation Response Training: Use soothing visual imagery, rhythmic breathing, and muscle relaxation to calm yourself, at first in the daytime, and then before sleep.

Before treatment, participants needed an average of 80 minutes to fall asleep. They also reported higher levels of anxiety and depression when compared with a control group. After 10 weeks of treatment it took the participants an average of 19 minutes to fall asleep, a 75% reduction; and their total sleep increased by nearly an hour. Anxiety and depression were also greatly reduced.

Previous studies using a single behavioral technique reported that the time needed to fall asleep was reduced only 25 to 58%.