Kneginja Richter

Abstract Shift work is associated with an increased risk of sleep disorders, yet tailored prevention and treatment programs remain rare and understudied. Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia is the first-line treatment for insomnia in the general population. We thus developed an anonymous online counselling service based on cognitive behavioral principles, adapted it to shift workers’ needs, and evaluated it in a sample of German shift workers from various industries.

Es herrscht Unruhe in deutschen Schlafzimmern: 20 Prozent aller Erwachsenen geben an, regelmäßig oder in einer schwierigen Lebensphase schlecht zu schlafen. Das kann sich auf die psychische Gesundheit auswirken. Während des Schlafs verarbeitet das Gehirn Emotionen, speichert Erinnerungen und erholt sich von den Belastungen des Tages. Und chronischer Schlafmangel kann das Risiko für psychische Erkrankungen wie Depressionen, Angststörungen oder Burnout erhöhen.

Introduction Circadian rhythms influence human physiology and behavior, promoting wakefulness and cognition during the day and reducing cortical activity for sleep at night. Disrupted sleep increases the risk for incident and worsening psychiatric illness (Pigeon et al., 2012; Li et al., 2016; Hertenstein et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2019; Freeman et al., 2020), and this risk may partially derive from nocturnal wakefulness, which we define as being awake during the circadian or biological night.