Prof Niro Siriwardena was one of the invited speakers at the Royal Society of Medicine conference on CBT for insomnia disorder: evidence base and practical implementation methods, where he spoke on ‘Applying CBT for insomnia in general practice’. This was based on work from the Resources for Effective Sleep Treatment project (www.restproject.org.uk) which is a programme of work exploring the potential for using psychological treatments for insomnia routinely in primary care instead of sleeping tablets.
The event, which took place on 19 November in London was organised by Prof Colin Espie, sleep expert at Oxford University. He introduced a number of distinguished speakers, international experts in their field, including Prof Charles Morin from Quebec who gave an overview of insomnia and CBT efficacy studies; Prof Kevin Morgan from Loughborough University who spoke on CBT for insomnia in older adults; Dr June Brown on small and large group CBT; Dr John Cape on CBT bibliotherapy for insomnia; and Dr Simon Kyle who discussed abbreviated and single component CBT for insomnia. Finally, Prof Espie presented on digital CBT-I.
The meeting was well attended by practitioners and academics from primary, community and mental health sectors of the health service. The CaHRU team are currently investigating the potential for community pharmacists to implement psychological treatment for insomnia instead of over-the-counter hypnotics in a feasibility study in Lincolnshire.