How Do Mental Health Clinics Treat Sleep Disorders?
A mental health clinic helps address conditions such as anxiety and depression that affect your sleep quality. Sleep disorders might lead to burnout, accidents when doing routine activities, and health complications like insulin resistance and high blood pressure. Therapy may influence lifestyle changes, such as limiting caffeine consumption and implementing regular sleep schedules, which help prevent sleep disorders. Here are some ways a mental health clinic helps treat sleep disorders:
CBT-I Treatment
Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) might stop conditioned arousal, which triggers sleep disorders. Conditioned arousal is a case where the expectation that sleep will be difficult leads to actual difficulty when trying to sleep. The CBT-I approach is a targeted intervention lasting several sessions. In the long term, CBT-I helps address underlying thought and behavioral patterns perpetuating insomnia. CBT-I may lower or stop worries and negative thoughts contributing to sleeping challenges.
The behavioral aspect of CBT-I may help you learn positive sleep habits. These habits include limiting caffeine when approaching bedtime and observing a regular sleeping schedule to help improve your sleep. A mental health clinic influences improved sleep for people with conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that cause sleep disorders. Some of the strategies a mental health clinic applies when administering CBT-I include:
Stimulus Control Therapy
A psychiatrist can condition your mind and body to embrace rather than fight sleep. A CBT-I expert can coach you to set a specific time to go to bed and wake up. The specialist can make sure you avoid napping occasionally during the day so you can observe the designated sleep time. A psychiatrist helps you adopt measures like leaving your bedroom if you find it challenging to sleep within 20 minutes. Getting back to bed only when you feel tired may improve your chances of getting better sleep.
Relaxation Techniques
Your therapist can coach you on relaxation techniques such as progressive muscle relaxation, breathing exercises, and biofeedback. The techniques include breathing in and out slowly for several minutes. Your therapist may have you tense muscle groups as you inhale and release the tension as you exhale. These measures help you decrease anxiety during bedtime.
Learn to control your breathing rate and tension in your muscles. This allows relaxation, which is necessary for good sleep. Such relaxation techniques help your sleep by lowering the release of stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. Lowering the release of these hormones helps you relax by slowing down your heart rate as you breathe.
Paradoxical Intention
This strategy aims to lower the anxiety and worry about getting good sleep. The practitioner helps you go to bed with a mindset of remaining awake rather than expecting to fall asleep. This helps to make sleeping easier by avoiding extreme focus on sleep that aggravates conditional arousal.
Medication Management
Medication management can be an efficient complement to CBT-I. You may require prescription sleeping pills to get a good night’s sleep. A skilled practitioner makes sure you get the proper prescriptions while avoiding adverse side effects. You may use antidepressants like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and monoamine oxidase inhibitors. Prescription medications treat insomnia by addressing issues such as anxiety and depression that cause irregular sleep patterns.
Seek a Mental Health Clinic Today
Mental health clinics can be useful tools to learn to treat sleep disorders. A good night’s sleep reorganizes your nerve cells to help improve your internal body’s communication. You may notice more positive relationships at work and increased productivity when you get effective treatment for sleep disorders. Contact a reliable clinic today to learn more about the tools they use for managing sleep disorders.
