Understanding Insomnia in the College Population

The purpose of my project was to increase awareness among healthcare providers and students regarding the importance of sleep assessment and management at the University of Utah Student Health Center. Despite the fact that 50-70 million Americans suffer from sleep disturbances (Institute of Medicine, 2006), public and provider awareness about the consequences of poor quality and quantity of sleep is low. Due to a variety of factors including increasing stressful demands on college students and vulnerability to common psychiatric co-morbidities such as anxiety and depression, the college population is especially susceptible to difficulties with sleep, particularly the insomnias. Costs of sleep disturbances include negative health effects, cognitive deficits that may affect academic performance, lower self reported quality of life scores, and increased financial burden to the individual and society. If left untreated, insomnia may progress to chronicity further increasing treatment difficulty and chance of recurrence. Further compounding the problem, relatively little training exists related to sleep disturbances in medical schools (Mindell et al., 2011), resulting in unawareness about the magnitude of the problem and the importance of early effective treatment. My project objectives were to increase knowledge and awareness about sleep deprivation/ insomnia among providers and students in the college population. I accomplished this through a presentation to health care providers working in the University of Utah Student Health Center on March 27th where I discussed insomnia and introduced common sleep assessments and a sleep diary that can be used in the student health center. My presentation objectives were to review insomnia presentation, describe several models of insomnia focusing on the neurocognitive changes that can result from insomnia or sleep deprivation, outline important history and assessment, and identify and discuss self-report tools helpful in diagnosis and management of insomnia. Prior to my presentation I asked providers to fill out a brief assessment of their current practices to allow for a quality improvement evaluation and effectiveness of the information I provided. I received evaluation feedback about my presentation content as well as if they would be more likely to use sleep assessments or guidelines for treatment. Overall practitioners stated the presentation increased their general knowledge about insomnia in the college population, they were more likely to discuss sleep with their patients, use a sleep diary and/or sleep assessment tools, and provide patients with handouts detailing sleep hygiene practices. To increase awareness among students I created a pamphlet that is accessible on the Center for Student Wellness website. I created a voice over PowerPoint that with serve to disseminate the information to future nurse practitioner students.