Introduction
ABI, mood disorders, decline in cognitive abilities, fatigue, sleep disturbances, anxiety, brain injury, insomnia, depression
Individuals with acquired brain injury (ABI) often have a wide range of impairments which may result in long-term difficulties in everyday life (Sleep disturbances negatively affect health, resulting in a lower quality of life, decline in cognitive abilities and a higher risk of mood disorders (According to the European Sleep Research Society (ESRS), the preferred treatment of sleep disturbances in the healthy population consists of non-pharmacological treatments, such as cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) (While studies in healthy individuals have thus provided clear evidence for CBT-I as the treatment of choice for sleep disturbances, there is to date limited evidence for the effectiveness of CBT-I following ABI. Based on several systematic reviews, CBT interventions are most promising for improving sleep following ABI (The aim of the present study is to examine whether a short add-on therapy for sleep disturbances in individuals with ABI is effective in an outpatient rehabilitation setting. The add-on sleep therapy was developed based on CBT-I components, which have shown to be effective in previous studies (The main hypothesis of the present study is that the sleep quality significantly improves in the group who received the short add-on sleep therapy in addition to treatment as usual (CBT-I + TAU) compared to the group that received rehabilitation treatment as usual only (TAU only). We also hypothesize that the treatment group (CBT-I + TAU) will demonstrate less fatigue and dysfunctional beliefs and attitudes about sleep, and less feelings of anxiety and depression. In addition to a group analysis, the effectiveness of the short add-on sleep therapy will also be studied at the individual level. Reliable change indices (RCI) for the primary outcome measure (reported sleep quality) will be calculated for each patient to determine whether the short add-on therapy resulted in clinically significant changes in sleep quality. The short add-on therapy may lead to a valuable contribution to neuropsychological rehabilitation in clinical practice.