Effects of Constructive Worry, Imagery Distraction, and Gratitude Interventions on Sleep Quality: A Pilot Trial
Digdon and Koble tested three self-help techniques for students whose sleep was disturbed by a racing mind, delivered entirely by email: constructive worry, in which worries are converted into planned solutions earlier in the evening; imagery distraction, in which attention is occupied by a detailed imagined scene; and a gratitude exercise. Participants recorded sleep, worry and pre-sleep arousal daily for a baseline week and an intervention week. All three reduced worry and arousal and improved sleep compared with baseline, and none was reliably better than the others. Participants rated them moderately helpful rather than transformative. The sample is small and there was no inactive control condition, so some of the improvement may belong to the attention and the daily recording rather than to the techniques. The authors' practical point is about delivery: these can be sent by email to a whole university at almost no cost, which matters where sleep clinicians are unavailable.
Digdon and Koble tested three self-help techniques for students whose sleep was disturbed by a racing mind, delivered entirely by email: constructive worry, in which worries are converted into planned solutions earlier in the evening; imagery distraction, in which attention is occupied by a detailed imagined scene; and a gratitude exercise. Participants recorded sleep, worry and pre-sleep arousal daily for a baseline week and an intervention week. All three reduced worry and arousal and improved sleep compared with baseline, and none was reliably better than the others. Participants rated them moderately helpful rather than transformative. The sample is small and there was no inactive control condition, so some of the improvement may belong to the attention and the daily recording rather than to the techniques. The authors' practical point is about delivery: these can be sent by email to a whole university at almost no cost, which matters where sleep clinicians are unavailable.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Digdon, N. & Koble, A. (2011). "Effects of constructive worry, imagery distraction, and gratitude interventions on sleep quality: a pilot trial." Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 3(2), 193-206. Again no change in sleep onset latency.
Where we use it
- Why You Lie Awake at 3am Replaying One Conversation, Why We Care
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-0854.2011.01049.x
DOI: 10.1111/j.1758-0854.2011.01049.x