Despite high prevalence rates of insomnia among the elderly, very few treatment options adapted to the characteristics and needs of this population group exist. This study aims to investigate the efficacy of a thermal biofeedback based technique in treating sleep onset insomnia in an elderly sample. Eight healthy elderly good sleepers and eight healthy elderly sleep onset insomniacs participated in the study. The effect of the thermal biofeedback on participants' forehead temperature, clavicular temperature, right hand temperature, left hand temperature, stomach temperature, thigh temperature, right foot temperature, core body temperature, and sleep latency was assessed. Furthermore, the impact of the thermal biofeedback technique on participants' subjective ratings of biofeedback proficiency and sleepiness was investigated. The thermal biofeedback protocol failed to generate adequate and consistent changes in participants' body temperature, indicating that it is of limited practical used as a treatment of sleep onset insomnia in its present form. Several interesting trends observed during the current study are explored and areas for further research identified. / Thesis (MPsy(Clinical))--University of South Australia, 2006.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/267176 |
| Creators | Vajdic, Srdjan. |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | copyright under review |
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