A School-Based Sleep Intervention for Autistic Teenagers: Effects on Sleep Quality and Daytime Functioning

We co-created a school-based sleep intervention based on the premises that such interventions are likely to be more easily accessible than intervention delivered in clinical practice. In this study, we primarily investigated the efficacy of this intervention on sleep quality and daytime functioning using a multiple baseline design with 23 teenagers (Mage = 14.8, SD = 1.7, range = 12-18 years). The teenagers completed a daily web-based sleep diary and wore a sleep tracker overnight. They also answered questions about their daytime functioning, which were also answered by a parent and a teacher. Additionally, the teenagers, parents, and teachers completed questionnaires (sleep problems [ISI and CSHQ], and behavioral problems [SDQ]) at pretest, post-test, and follow-up. We found that the intervention had no significant effect on sleep quality or daytime functioning, however, the majority of the teenagers showed clinically significant improvement on the self-reported sleep problems questionnaire (ISI). Although our study population had mild sleep problems, which offers little room for improvement, this result suggests that the school-based sleep intervention has a positive effect on the severity of insomnia symptoms.