Implosive therapy as a treatment for insomnia

Previous research has suggested that insomnia is related positively to preoccupation with death. Introductory psychology students (N = 200) of both sexes who qualified as insomniacs were administered Implosive Therapy specifically targeted to fear of death, nonspecific Implosive Therapy, a relaxation procedure, or were assigned to a wait-control group. All three experimental treatments resulted in significant decreases in anxiety as measured by the Fear Survey Schedule II administered immediately after the experiment. The groups did not differ, however, before or after treatment on reported fear of death as measured by the Collett-Lester scale. On self-report measures collected 1 month after the experimental treatment, all groups, including the wait-control, showed a significant decrease in latency of sleep onset. Pairwise comparisons indicated that only the death implosion condition was significantly more effective than the wait-control. The finding was interpreted to mean that the death implosion produced a decrease in insomnia beyond the strong expectancy effects that resulted from all experimental treatments. The failure to observe changes in reported fear of death was attributed to Ss' anxiety-based reluctance to acknowledge openly such fear.