Johrei Therapy for Sleep Disturbances

The purpose of this project is to compare the effectiveness of Johrei therapy (JT) and Cognitive-behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) in the treatment of sleep disturbances in survivors of critical illness. Subjects will be recruited following discharge from the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and followed for 6 weeks. All subjects will undergo objective measurements of sleep quality and duration at baseline and at 6 weeks. Objective measurements will be made by portable (home-based) sleep studies and will wear a watch that measures sleep. Subjective measurements will be performed by sleep questionnaires: PSQI, Epworth sleepiness scale, sleep log, and Stanford Sleepiness Scale which will be performed at baseline, 2 and 6 weeks. A blood draw and urine collection will be done at both baseline and 6 weeks. The central purpose of this proposal is to perform a comparative-effectiveness study of a complementary and alternative approach (Johrei therapy) and CBT-I in the treatment of sleep disturbances in survivors of critical illness. The investigators hypothesize that, in survivors of critical illness, Johrei therapy is superior or comparable to CBT-I in improving sleep quality (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index [PSQI] and sleep efficiency [measured by polysomnography]). A secondary objective is to compare the effect of Johrei therapy and CBT-I on systemic markers of inflammation and urinary biomarkers of sleep and stress. The investigators hypothesize that, in survivors of critical illness, Johrei therapy is superior or comparable to CBT-I in reducing systemic markers of inflammation and urinary biomarkers of sleep and stress. A tertiary objective is to determine whether the presence of insomnia or other sleep characteristics is associated with hospital readmissions within 30-days.