Publications by authors named "Kerstin Blom"

Article Synopsis
  • - Restless legs syndrome (RLS) disrupts sleep and lowers quality of life, leading researchers to develop the RLS-Self-care Behaviour questionnaire (RLS-ScBq) to measure self-care activities for patients with this condition.
  • - The study with 788 patients assessed the questionnaire's validity and reliability, finding it useful for evaluating physical and mental self-care actions in managing RLS.
  • - Results indicated a two-factor solution with decent internal consistency, suggesting the RLS-ScBq could help healthcare professionals understand and promote self-care in RLS patients.
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Introduction: Insomnia is a common symptom among patients with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, negatively impacting symptom severity, functioning and well-being; however, it is rarely the direct focus of treatment. The main recommended treatment for insomnia is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT-I). There is some evidence that CBT-I can also be used to treat insomnia in patients with schizophrenia, but only a few randomised controlled trials (RCTs) have been published.

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Introduction: Insomnia and depression are highly prevalent disorders and commonly occur together. Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, CBT-I, has been shown to be effective in treating insomnia and also comorbid depression. However, it is unclear whether effects of CBT-I on depression are specific or nonspecific.

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Background: Reports of poor sleep are widespread, but their link with objective sleep (polysomnography-PSG) is weak in cross-sectional studies. In contrast, the purpose of this study was to investigate the association between changes in subjective and objective sleep variables using data from a study of the reduction in time in bed (TIB).

Methods: One sleep recording was carried out at baseline and one at treatment week 5 (end of treatment) (N = 34).

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Insomnia is common, and causes substantial individual suffering and costs for society. The recommended first-line treatment is cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), which is under-used partly due to a lack of trained providers. To train providers is thus important, but what is the current situation regarding CBT-I training? A systematic search of databases was conducted to identify scientific peer-reviewed papers describing CBT-I training with regards to: existing amounts of training, proposed curricula, trainees, delivery context, content of training, modes of delivery, evaluation of the training from a trainee perspective, and effects on patients.

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Background: A majority of psychiatric patients suffer from insomnia or insomnia-like problems. In addition to impairing quality of life, sleep problems can worsen psychiatric conditions, such as depression and anxiety, and can make treatment of various psychiatric conditions less successful. Several international guidelines recommend cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) as first line treatment.

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Background: In Adaptive Treatment Strategies, each patient's outcome is predicted early in treatment, and treatment is adapted for those at risk of failure. It is unclear what minimum accuracy is needed for a classifier to be clinically useful. This study aimed to establish a empirically supported benchmark accuracy for an Adaptive Treatment Strategy and explore the relative value of input predictors.

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The effects of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) have consistently been shown to improve insomnia symptoms and other health-related outcomes, but the effects on QoL have been inconsistent. Many factors including the type CBT-I delivery and type of instrument used to assess QoL make the topic complex. The present systematic review and meta-analysis synthesized the evidence of CBT-I efficacy on QoL outcomes across different populations, delivery modes, and methodological aspects.

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Insomnia is a common and chronic disorder, and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is the recommended treatment. Very long-term follow-ups of CBT are very rare, and this study aimed to investigate if improvements were stable one and ten years after CBT for insomnia (CBT-i). Based on a three-armed randomized controlled trial of bibliotherapeutic CBT-i, participants received an insomnia-specific self-help book and were randomized to therapist guidance, no guidance, or a waitlist receiving unguided treatment after a delay.

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Treating comorbid insomnia is important for recovery from, and prevention of, depression. The objective of this study was to compare comorbidity and patient characteristics among patients having treatment for depression before and after implementation of cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) in a routine care internet treatment clinic. We hypothesized that insomnia comorbidity would be lower among patients having treatment for depression after the treatment for insomnia became available, and that depression levels would be high among patients in the insomnia treatment group compared to previous studies of insomnia.

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The objectives were to investigate the potential for sleep-related behaviours, acceptance and cognitions to predict outcome (insomnia severity) of cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I). Baseline and outcome data from four randomised controlled trials (n = 276) were used. Predictors were the Dysfunctional Beliefs and Attitudes about Sleep-10 (DBAS-10), Sleep-Related Behaviours Questionnaire (SRBQ), and Sleep Problems Acceptance Questionnaire (SPAQ), and empirically derived factors from a factor analysis combining all items at baseline (n = 835).

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Objective: To develop a very brief scale with selected items from the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI), and to investigate the psychometric properties of the proposed scale in a psychiatric sample.

Methods: Patient data from seven Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for insomnia trials and from regular care were used in psychometric analyses (N = 280-15 653). The samples included patients screening (N = 6936) or receiving treatment (N = 1725) for insomnia and other psychiatric conditions.

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Background: Poor sleep, nausea, psychological distress, and a lowered quality of life are common during radiotherapy for cancer. There is a lack of studies on the relationship between radiotherapy-induced nausea and sleep. This longitudinal study analyzes data from 196 patients who underwent pelvic-abdominal radiotherapy for cancer.

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Depression is one of the most prevalent mental health disorders and is estimated to become the leading cause of disability worldwide by 2030. Increasing access to effective treatment for depression is a major societal challenge. In this context, the increasing use of computers in the form of laptops or smartphones has made it feasible to increase access to mental healthcare through digital technology.

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Insomnia, the most prevalent sleep disorder worldwide, confers marked risks for both physical and mental health. Furthermore, insomnia is associated with considerable direct and indirect healthcare costs. Recent guidelines in the US and Europe unequivocally conclude that cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) should be the first-line treatment for the disorder.

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Objective: Therapist guided Internet-Delivered Cognitive Behavior Therapy (ICBT) is effective, but as in traditional CBT, not all patients improve, and clinicians generally fail to identify them early enough. We predict treatment failure in 12-week regular care ICBT for Depression, Panic disorder and Social anxiety disorder, using only patients' weekly symptom ratings to identify when the accuracy of predictions exceed 2 benchmarks: (a) chance, and (b) empirically derived clinician preferences for actionable predictions.

Method: Screening, pretreatment and weekly symptom ratings from 4310 regular care ICBT-patients from the Internet Psychiatry Clinic in Stockholm, Sweden was analyzed in a series of regression models each adding 1 more week of data.

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Objective: To minimize the burden in detecting and monitoring Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia by developing a very brief scale with selected items from the Panic Disorder Severity Scale-Self Report (PDSS-SR), and to investigate the proposed scale's psychometric properties in a comorbid sample.

Methods: A sample of 5103 patients from the Internet Psychiatry Clinic in Sweden, diagnosed and treated with Internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy for panic disorder (n = 1390), social anxiety disorder (n = 1313) or depression (n = 2400), responded to the PDSS-SR. Six criteria related to factor structure, sensitivity to change and clinical representativeness were used to select items.

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Chronic insomnia is a common and burdensome problem for patients seeking primary care. Cognitive behavioural therapy has been shown to be effective for insomnia, also when presented with co-morbidities, but access to sleep therapists is limited. Group-treatment and self-administered treatment via self-help books have both been shown to be efficacious treatment options, and the present study aimed to evaluate the effect of an open-ended group intervention based on a self-help book for insomnia, adapted to fit a primary-care setting.

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Objective: This study aimed to demonstrate proof of concept for an adaptive treatment strategy in Internet-delivered cognitive-behavioral therapy (ICBT), where risk of treatment failure is assessed early in treatment and treatment for at-risk patients is adapted to prevent treatment failure.

Methods: A semiautomated algorithm assessed risk of treatment failure early in treatment in 251 patients undergoing ICBT for insomnia with therapist guidance. At-risk patients were randomly assigned to continue standard ICBT or to receive adapted ICBT.

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The objective of this study was to explore the effects of treatment compliance in a guided individually tailored internet-based treatment (TAIL) in relation to depression and co-morbid symptoms. Compliance with the homework in the different treatment components in TAIL, each aimed at a specific condition, was rated for 207 participants by independent assessors. Six subgroups (n = 34-131) were constructed consisting of participants with co-occurring symptoms of worry, panic, social anxiety, stress, insomnia, or pain.

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Clinical trials have demonstrated the efficacy of internet delivered cognitive behaviour therapy (ICBT) for anxiety and depression. However, relatively little is known about the context, operations, and outcomes of ICBT when administered as part of routine care. This paper describes the setting, relationship to existing health services, procedures for referral, assessment, treatment, patients and outcomes of ICBT clinics in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Canada and Australia.

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This 3-year follow-up compared insomnia treatment to depression treatment for patients with both diagnoses. Forty-three participants were randomized to either treatment, in the form of Internet-delivered therapist-guided cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), and 37 (86%) participants provided primary outcome data at the 3-year follow-up. After 3 years, reductions on depression severity were similar in both groups (between-group effect size, d = 0.

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Study Objectives: To investigate the long-term effects of therapist-guided Internet-based insomnia treatment on insomnia severity and sleep medication use, compared with active control.

Methods: This study was an 8 week randomized controlled trial with follow-up posttreatment and at 6, 12, and 36 months, set at the Internet Psychiatry Clinic, Stockholm, Sweden. Participants were 148 media-recruited nondepressed adults with insomnia.

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Unlabelled: Insomnia and depression is a common and debilitating comorbidity, and treatment is usually given mainly for depression. Guided Internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (ICBT-i) was, in a recent study on which this report is based, found superior to a treatment for depression (ICBT-d) for this patient group, but many patients did not reach remission.

Aims: To identify facilitating and hindering factors for patients in ICBT-i and ICBT-d and formulate hypotheses for future research.

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