Cognitive-behavioral treatment for childhood sleep disorders

Sleep problems are very prevalent during childhood and may have adverse developmental impact. The efficacy of a number of cognitive-behavioral interventions for the most prevalent problems such as difficulty falling asleep and night-wakings has been repeatedly demonstrated with relatively rapid outcomes and high success rates. Preventive interventions in infancy have shown some promise in lowering the rates of sleep problems in infants of trained parents. Cognitive-behavioral interventions have also been proposed for childhood parasomnias (sleepwalking, night terrors, nightmares, and rhythmic behaviors), however, very limited research has been conducted to assess the efficacy of these interventions. Specific methodological issues, limitations and needs have been identified in the clinical literatures. These issues include: (a) integrating objective sleep assessment methods in clinical research; (b) identifying the specific curative factors of various effective interventions; (c) the absence of long-term follow-up studies for assessing relapse problems; (d) assessing the role of mode of delivery (i.e., professional consultation versus written information) in treatment efficacy; and (e) the need to expand the research on clinical interventions for the parasomnias.