Mindfulness Therapy on Disrupted Sleep in Bipolar Disorder

This is the first evaluation of the efficacy of a mindfulness-based intervention for insomnia in bipolar disorder. It distills the findings from previous mindfulness-based interventions for other disorders that documented beneficial effects for sleep, by concentrating on the most active mindfulness ingredient for treating sleep (the Body Scan). To date, mindfulness based studies have focused on either subjective sleep reports or laboratory-based measures of sleep, both of which have long been called into question because of their lack of ecological validity. This study takes advantage of recent developments in ambulatory sleep monitoring by using the new, FDA approved M1 device, which assesses sleep objectively in a patient's home environment. The M1 device is also the only ambulatory sleep-monitoring device to date that simultaneously assesses both sleep quantity and quality. Finally, this study broadens the view above and beyond sleep and mood and investigates the impact on cognitive and sleep-related psychosocial functioning, both at the end of treatment as well as at a 3-month follow-up. Overall, this work could result in a brief, easy to administer, and easy to disseminate intervention for patients with bipolar disorder with insomnia.