Weighted blankets for treating insomnia in adult patients with anxiety
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
Weighted blankets have been popularized as an alternative, non-pharmacologic tool for mitigating insomnia and anxiety. These conditions are highly comorbid due their shared state of hyperarousal. Unbeknownst to most buyers, there is a lack of clinical research to fully support their use for these indications. Most research is focused on their efficacy in anxiety relief, whereas a minority of studies provide evidence of their benefit in resolving sleep difficulties. This intervention has been found to be effective for the conditions separately. However, there have been few-to-no research studies on its use for concurrent cases of anxiety and insomnia. The proposed study will evaluate the efficacy of weighted blankets in treating clinical insomnia in patients with formally diagnosed anxiety. It will provide adult participants recruited from local psychiatric clinics in Boston, MA with either a weighted blanket or a control blanket to use nightly for a 4-week period. They will be monitored for changes in weekly insomnia severity index (ISI) scores and in wrist actigraphy readings to evaluate the efficacy of weighted blankets in improving sleep compared to control blankets. The study will also look at changes in perceived anxiety via analysis of weekly State Trait Anxiety Inventory-6 (STAI-6) scores as a secondary measure. Findings of this study will be significant for filling this gap of research. A major issue involving insomnia management is the over prescription of sleep medications, which confer residual side effects onto patients with minimal long-term resolution of sleep difficulty. This study will be important for finding evidence to help give medical providers more research-driven, non-pharmacological tools for insomnia management to offer patients, hopefully allowing for safer, more sustainable clinical practice.
Description
2024