Effectiveness of a guided digital self-help intervention to improve sleep and the biological clock in university students - Study protocol for a randomized controlled trial.

Background

Sleep problems occur in many university students which affects their mental health and daily functioning. Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) has been proven effective in adults but research in university students, who struggle to maintain a 24-hour rhythm, is still limited. We hypothesize that a guided digital CBT-I intervention, enriched with components on the biological clock (

Objectives

We aim to evaluate the effectiveness of a guided online sleep and biological clock self-help intervention in improving sleep, depression symptoms, anxiety symptoms, functioning, academic performance, and quality of life in university students at 6 weeks and 18 weeks.

Methods

This is a two-arm parallel-group superiority randomized controlled trial, comparing a 5-week guided online

Discussion

The current study tests the effectiveness of an online self-help intervention for university students who suffer from sleep problems. This trial builds upon an open feasibility study and will provide evidence of an online guided self-help program for students. The findings of this study will determine the potential wider dissemination of the intervention to address the high need for available and accessible help for students experiencing insomnia.

Trial registration

ClinicalTrials.Gov (NCT06023693), registered on August 3rd, 2023.

Informations de copyright

© 2024 The Authors.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

AvS developed the initial i-Sleep intervention, which has been further developed by LP and NA, with input by all authors. None of the authors have any commercial interest. The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.