Managing Sleep Problems in Trauma and PTSD

To express your interest in gaining access to this training, please visit this page and submit your contact details. 

If you are currently treating an emergency service worker from the agencies represented in Responder Assist a coupon code will be provided for free access to the course. Clinicians with an interest outside the scope of Responder Assist are invited to contact Phoenix Australia through this link to discuss access options.

Problematic sleep is extremely common for current and ex-serving emergency services members, particularly amongst those who have experienced trauma, and those with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It frequently manifests as insomnia and recurring nightmares, causing substantial distress, exacerbating associated mental health issues, and impairing daily functioning.

Importantly, recent research suggests that problematic sleep should be regarded as a primary disorder, even when it forms key symptoms within PTSD. In fact, traditional trauma-focused interventions often fail to significantly alleviate sleep disturbances. This underscores the critical need for clinicians to directly address problematic sleep through targeted assessment and intervention.

Managing Sleep Problems has been developed by clinical experts and equips you with knowledge and skills needed for the best-practice assessment and treatment of emergency service members with problematic sleep in the context of PTSD.

The aims of this course are to: 

• Describe sleep, its biological mechanisms and its roles
• Define problematic sleep
• Highlight the classification systems for sleep disorders
• Describe the relationship between problematic sleep and trauma and other mental health disorders, including PTSD
• Highlight key clinical features of sleep problems in PTSD
• Discuss common sleep disorders in emergency service workers
• Highlight how problematic sleep requires targeted assessment and intervention
• Introduce and describe assessment, formulation and evidence-based treatments for problematic sleep in the context of PTSD

After taking this course practitioners will be able to:

• Be able to describe the nature of sleep and sleep problems
• Recognise how trauma and/or PTSD can affect sleep
• Apply to clinical practice evidence-based strategies for the assessment of sleep problems
• Develop case formulations that provide direction to treatment, and
• Apply to clinical practice skills in the use of evidence-based strategies for sleep problems in PTSD.