As many as three in ten adults have trouble sleeping. They spend more than $32 billion a year on medications, books and recordings, hoping to get a good night’s rest.
Now, a team at the University of Virginia is offering another solution online.
54-year-old Jonathan West is the father of four and a consultant who helps people figure out how to pay for college. He doesn’t lie awake wondering how he’ll finance his own children’s education, but for more than a decade he’s had trouble sleeping.
“I would wake up early and not get back to sleep, or I would have trouble falling asleep, either one.”
As he searched for a solution online, he came across a behavior modification program called SHUTi – short for sleep healthy using the Internet. It’s patterned after what mental health professionals do to treat insomnia, and it’s been proven effective in three different studies Frances Thorndike and Lee Ritterband are clinical psychologists at the University of Virginia.