No open-label placebo effect in insomnia? Lessons learned from an experimental trial

Open-label placebo (OLP) treatment seems to be effective in several medical conditions but has not yet been investigated in insomnia. Furthermore, it needs to be evaluated whether providing a plausible treatment rationale is essential to obtain OLP effects.

In two consecutive nights, the sleep of patients with primary insomnia (n = 45) was assessed via subjective and objective measures. Before the second night, they received a single OLP pill that was randomly provided either with a treatment rationale (OLP+) or without (OLP-). When (M)ANOVAs did not reveal differential effects between the two OLP groups, the OLP+ group was compared post-hoc to a formerly assessed no pill control sample (NPC; n = 23).

Neither the MANOVAs nor the ANOVAs revealed significant interaction effects of treatment group and assessment night. The OLP+ condition was superior neither to OLP- nor to NPC in improving the patients' sleep.

Our findings do neither confirm the general efficacy of OLP in primary insomnia nor differential effects depending on the treatment rationale. Possible explanations lie in the dosing scheme (i.e., single OLP application), the provision of the OLP rationale by video and the experimental instead of therapeutic character of our investigation. Trials with larger samples and longer-term OLP treatment in insomnia are needed. Providing the rationale face-to-face and in a clinical setting might be additionally beneficial.