If DBT speaks to you, you may want to look into ACT. It’s related to CBT and DBT, but less focused on reforming problematic thoughts/feelings and more focused on living a valued life irrespective of the problematic thoughts/feelings.

Russ Harris is great at making ACT palatable to a general audience. Check out some of his YouTube videos (https://thehappinesstrap.com/free-resources/ ) or the just-released updated edition his The Happiness Trap book.

There’s also a DIY workbook that is truly excellent at helping with this stuff, called Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life. Highly recommend it.

Hope some of this helps!

I think you may be misreading the data. What they found, as far as I can tell, was 10% prevalence in suicide attempts by all participants, not just those with insomnia. (Among those with insomnia, the percent was much higher.)

My point is to question whether they started with a representative sample of students, if 10% of the general sample (before accounting for insomnia) had attempted suicide.

… I wish I had access to the full article and not just the abstract! Makes it hard to understand what exactly the data are saying.

Not to diminish what you’ve said but, from the abstract of the article, the results really need to be situated among the studied population (university students 18–25), and the predictive value of insomnia for suicidality disappears when covariates are accounted for. Both of those seem like major things to note, especially if you’re measuring “lifetime” suicidality (and everyone is, at most, a very young adult).

Separately, the abstract says that 97/885 of these undergraduates had actually attempted suicide in their lives. Does anyone know if this matches up with other findings regarding suicide attempts—10% seems really high to me.

Finally, the data for these studies were collected at the height of Covid. I wonder whether this was accounted for, considering insomnia rates were probably affected during this collective trauma we all experienced.

Here’s the abstract from the article:

> Objective: To evaluate sleep continuity, timing, quality, and disorder in relation to suicidal ideation and attempts among college students.

> Participants: Eight hundred eighty-five undergraduates aged 18–25 in the southwestern United States.

> Methods: Participants completed questionnaires on sleep, suicide risk, mental health, and substance use. Differences in sleep variables were compared by lifetime and recent suicidal ideation and suicide attempts using covariate-adjusted and stepwise regression models.

> Results: A total of 363 (40.1%) individuals reported lifetime suicidal ideation, of whom 172 (19.4%) reported suicidal ideation in the last 3 months and 97 (26.7%) had attempted suicide in their lifetime. Sleep disturbances were prevalent among those with lifetime suicidal ideation or a lifetime suicide attempt. Insomnia was identified as the best predictor of recent suicidal ideation, but this relationship did not survive adjustment for covariates.

> Conclusions: Sleep continuity, quality, and sleep disorders are broadly associated with suicidal thoughts and behaviors among college students.

This wouldn’t surprise me. One way to treat depression and anxiety is to engage in behavioural activation—taking part in activities that once brought you joy or fulfillment, despite the fact that you don’t really feel like it at the moment. Doing so can bring a sense of satisfaction and self-efficacy afterwards.

If these folks believe they’ve become more physically active, perhaps they feel the self-efficacy etc. that comes along with that. Just a thought—I’ll read the article more carefully later to see what the authors might say about it in their discussion section.