Expert sleep care at your fingertips!

Lorraine Irlam, Registered Clinical Counsellor
Jan 9, 2023
4 min read

There are so many people needlessly wasting their lives to insomnia. I used to be one of them. It was as though I’d lost my ability to sleep. And after more than two decades of far too much tossing and turning in the night, I’d begun to give up hope.

As a therapist, I was shocked to discover that there are actually strategies that can effectively help people recover from chronic insomnia. (Wait, you mean, I wasted all those years for nothing?! Spoiler alert: Yes.)

It’s called cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (aka CBT-I). It’s not your usual CBT: it’s very unique to sleep and insomnia. I was also amazed to learn that there are so few therapists specializing in it. Meanwhile, research finds roughly 20% of the population is living with chronic insomnia disorder. That’s one in five people you pass on the street! “Chronic insomnia disorder” means difficulty falling asleep and/or staying asleep at least 3 times per week for at least 3 months. And many more people (nearly 50%) are also struggling with sleep from time to time. So if that sounds like you, you’re not alone.

As you can imagine, that also means that there can be long wait lists to get help for insomnia. Last year I had almost 100 people on my wait list! I felt terrible having to turn away so many people when I could relate so much to what they were going through. And I knew I could help them. So, I created a self-paced online course that’s available anytime, anywhere in the world.

However, many people prefer one-on-one help for their sleep problems. I get that. People have questions. They want to know how these strategies might need to be modified for their own unique circumstances. And they’ve probably already tried every wild goose chase under the sun – yet they still have insomnia. So, understandably, they aren’t convinced that a self-help course is going to cure them of years of chronic insomnia, years of desperation for sleep.

While I’m confident that most people who follow the strategies in the course will have significantly improved sleep within a few weeks, I also know that personalized one-on-one support and customized recommendations from a therapist specializing in CBT-I is the “gold standard” in insomnia treatment. That means it is widely accepted as being the best treatment available and is supposed to be recommended first, before other options such as medication. Unfortunately, the statistics are discouraging: for every specialist, there are 140,000 people suffering from insomnia, which might explain why so many people have never heard of CBT-I - and end up on sleep medications instead. Yet even if they are aware of it, it’s not readily accessible. Or they might have found a therapist who’s had some basic training in CBT-I, but doesn’t specialize in it. As a result, people are desperately turning to the scores of unproven apps and devices available on the internet.

Well, I have fantastic news.

There’s a brand new program called COAST (Clinician Operated Assisted Sleep Technology), developed with the help of millions of dollars in research funding (mostly from the U.S. government, as well as some non-profit organizations) that finally makes CBT-I available to a much greater number of insomnia sufferers.

The research results are exciting: by the end of the 6-week study, most of the research participants were enjoying better sleep. For example, significant improvement was found in:

insomnia severity
- sleep quality
- overnight sleep disruptions
- daytime sleepiness
- depression
- anxiety
- and even PTSD symptoms

Thanks to the development of this effective technology, therapists like me can provide a similar level of care, helping more people, at a significantly lower cost than live face-to-face therapy.

What I love about this program:

Convenience. There’s no need to schedule and show up for appointments (forget about booking time off work, commuting to appointments, wasting time sitting in a waiting room or paying for transit, gas or parking)
You’ll still get weekly tips, not only from the app, but also one-on-one support and personalized recommendations from me each week via the secure messaging feature
I’ll provide professional assessments based on your own unique needs
It only takes about a minute each day to fill out your sleep info in the app and you’ll have the opportunity to ask me questions and get customized advice each week.
Optional bedtime reminders and wake-up alarms can be set up
The cost is so much more affordable! (And if you have employee or student extended help benefits, check with your provider to see if some or all of the fees might be covered.)

Insomnia Help Canada has partnered with Noctem Health to bring you better sleep through a program combining their COAST app with one-on-one digital insomnia therapy. Insomnia Help Canada is currently the only provider of this service in Canada. We are also the only provider anywhere that we know of offering added (optional) bonus video material, interesting handouts and helpful support materials, making it an engaging, interactive multi-media program to help you get your sleep – and your life – back again. These brief interesting videos (mostly 2 or 3 minutes each) help you understand how sleep regulation systems work and how they can become disrupted, to make sense of the evidence-based strategies for getting your sleep back on track again, in just a few weeks.

Knowledge is power when it comes to sleep.

How can you get started?

Contact us for approval and to receive an access code
Download the Noctem Health COAST app
Complete your to-do list in the app in less than 1 minute every day.
Over the course of six weeks, I’ll send you personalized support, helpful tips and customized recommendations to guide you through the steps for using new daily habits to improve your sleep – and your quality of life.

You don’t have to waste years of your life, like I did.