Researchers at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience identified seven forms of hyperarousal and developed a freely accessible tool to measure them across disorders, including insomnia.
Key takeaways:
- Researchers identified seven distinct types of hyperarousal that present with varying severity across disorders like insomnia, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
- A newly developed, concise questionnaire allows researchers and clinicians to map these hyperarousal types more easily.
- The tool aims to facilitate more targeted treatment plans for patients with multiple underlying predispositions.
Researchers at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience have discovered seven different types of hyperarousal and developed a new questionnaire to measure them, aiming to improve the understanding and treatment of insomnia and other mental disorders.
Hyperarousal influences the severity of insomnia, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and ADHD. However, researchers noted inconsistencies in how the term is used across the field.
“Within sleep research, we already know a great deal about the role of hyperarousal in insomnia,” says Tom Bresser, first author, in a release. “But hyperarousal also plays a major role in many other mental disorders. If we better understand what hyperarousal really is, we can also better understand insomnia, anxiety, and depression.”
To investigate, the research team combined numerous questionnaires for various mental disorders into a single survey, which was completed by nearly 500 participants from sleepregister.nl.
The study revealed seven distinct types of hyperarousal. While almost every type occurred across multiple disorders, their relative severity differed among people with insomnia, depression, anxiety, panic disorder, PTSD, and ADHD.
Based on these findings, the researchers created a concise questionnaire to measure the different types. The tool allows researchers to map hyperarousal more easily instead of searching for a combination of different questionnaires. A sleep lab is already using the questionnaire in several of its own studies on insomnia and anxiety.
Bresser hopes the tool will be adopted in clinical practice to help psychologists identify underlying predispositions and provide targeted treatments that address multiple types of hyperarousal simultaneously.
“Often someone comes to a psychologist with disorder A, but it turns out they also have a predisposition for disorder B or C,” says Bresser. “By using the combined questionnaire, the underlying forms of hyperarousal can hopefully become clearer.”
Bresser is also investigating the brain mechanisms involved to map which brain regions are connected to each type of hyperarousal.
The questionnaire is freely accessible in the appendix of the study, which was published in eClinicalMedicine.
