ONLINE-CBT-I: Conceptualization, treatment planning, and intervention

Overview of Training:

This workshop is designed to provide the core elements of cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia. The course starts by grounding participants in the basics of sleep medicine that undergird the practice of CBT-I. It goes on to present systematic, empirically validated treatment methods and essential information about the etiology and evolution of chronic insomnia necessary to inform assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and the handling of treatment resistance.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of the presentation attendees will be able to:

• Define the basics of sleep nomenclature including sleep period, phase, continuity, and architecture.

• Define and distinguish acute insomnia from Insomnia Disorder and discuss the importance of treating the chronic form as a specifically targeted co-morbidity.

• Cite the evidence for the efficacy of CBT-I for both primary and co-morbid insomnia disorder.

• Explain the Spielman model of insomnia and basics of sleep regulation, and demonstrate how to utilize these concepts in the deployment of CBT-I.

• Explain how to obtain useable patient sleep diary data, and how to analyze the data for use in the course of CBT-I treatment.

• Apply the techniques of Stimulus Control and Sleep Restriction therapy to the treatment of chronic Insomnia.

• Apply the techniques of sleep hygiene education and cognitive therapeutic strategies to the treatment of chronic insomnia.

• Apply a decision-making algorithm to case conceptualization.

• Explain the steps necessary to aide in good relapse prevention.

Meet Donn Posner

Dr. Donn Posner is the Founder and President of Sleepwell Consultants and has been consulting to organizations and individuals on a wide variety of sleep health issues including insomnia, circadian dysrhythmia, CPAP adherence, and parasomnias. He continues to operate a small clinical practice in Behavioral Sleep Medicine and is a licensed psychologist in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and California. He is also currently an Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine and a consulting psychologist, for the Palo Alto VA. He is working on a number of grants exploring the effects of CBT-I in Gulf War Veterans and Veterans with insomnia and Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.

Prior to this, he spent 25 years serving as the Director of Behavioral Sleep Medicine for the Sleep Disorders Center of Lifespan Hospitals, and was a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the Warren Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University. For 20 of those years Dr. Posner had served as the primary supervisor for a rotation of the Behavioral Medicine track of the clinical psychology internship at Brown. The rotation focused on the assessment and treatment of Sleep and Anxiety Disorders, and was one of the few rotations of its kind in the US.

Dr. Posner is one of the authors of Cognitive Behavioral Treatment of Insomnia: A Session-by-Session Guide (New York: Springer/Verlag). The book is intended for clinical trainees, and non-insomnia sleep specialists, as well as more experienced clinicians from outside the sleep medicine field, who wish to learn how to provide empirically validated cognitive behavioral treatment for insomnia (CBT-I).

Dr. Posner is a member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and is one of the first Certified Behavioral Sleep Medicine specialists recognized by that group. He is also a founding member of the Society of Behavioral Sleep Medicine and he has also now achieved the status of Diplomate with the BBSM which is the highest level of qualification and competency they bestow.

Continuing Education Credits:

( 6.5 ) contact hours will be earned and board approval is pending.