A Stepped Care, eHealth Sleep Intervention for High-School Teachers with Sleep Disturbances and Psychological Distress

Professor Chan, Christian Shaunlyn   (Principal Investigator (PI))

Dr Lau Esther Yuet Ying   (Co-Investigator)

Dr Ho Yan Yee Fiona   (Co-Investigator)

38

2021-09-01

1197089

A Stepped Care, eHealth Sleep Intervention for High-School Teachers with Sleep Disturbances and Psychological Distress

CBT-I, eHealth, psychological distress, self-help, sleep disturbances, stepped care

Others - Medicine, Dentistry and Health

18191811

Health and Medical Research Fund - Full Grant

2020

On-going

Objectives: To develop and evaluate the effect of a stepped-care, eHealth sleep intervention on sleep disturbances and psychological distress in secondary school teachers. Hypothesis to be tested: Participants receiving the intervention will see greater improvement in sleep disturbances and psychological distress at the ninth month follow-up compared with those in waitlist control. Design: Two-arm cluster randomized controlled trial. Participants: 372 secondary school teachers in Hong Kong. Interventions: A stepped care sleep intervention will include: Step 1: online psychoeducation workshops with downloadable materials for all participants, Step 2: a six-week smartphone-based self-help CBT-I (""proact-S""), and Step 3: group consultation by a clinical psychologist. Participants in the waitlist control group will be not offered the intervention until the completion of data collection of the intervention group. Main outcome measures: At baseline and nine months after randomization: Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, Insomnia Severity Index, Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, and Kessler Screening Scale for Psychological Distress. Wrist Actigraphy will be employed for collecting data on sleep onset latency (SOL), wake after sleep onset (WASO), total sleep time (TST), and sleep efficiency (SE). Secondary outcome will include teachers' teaching self-efficacy. Data analysis: Random-effects regression analyses will be conducted to compare between the two groups. The clustered nature of the data and relevant covariates will be adjusted. Expected results: Compared to the waitlist control group, participants in the intervention group will report significantly better sleep and fewer mental health symptoms and at the ninth-month follow-up.