Autogenic Training Exercise: This exercise is sometimes helpful for individuals who have difficulty falling asleep. It involves saying phrases about your body and how it is feeling, which have been shown to be relaxing.

Breathing Exercise: This handout walks patients through a breathing exercise. No handout is good enough to teach diaphragmatic breathing, but I use this as a reminder for people to take home.

Epworth Sleepiness Scale: This is the most widely-used instrument to measure habitual sleepiness. It is in many ways an imperfect measure, but it has been shown to be useful in both clinical and research settings. Scores 10 or higher are usually associated with clinically-relevant sleepiness. Cite: Johns MW. A new method for measuring daytime sleepiness: the Epworth sleepiness scale. Sleep. Dec 1991;14(6):540-545.

Insomnia Severity Index: This short, simple, and frequently-used scale measures the presence as well as severity of various symptoms of insomnia. It is useful for determining whether a person's insomnia complaint may warrant an actual diagnosis of insomnia. See the original citation for how to score the measure and how to interpret scores. Cite: Bastien CH, Vallieres A, Morin CM. Validation of the Insomnia Severity Index as an outcome measure for insomnia research. Sleep Med. Jul 2001;2(4):297-307.

Karolinska Sleepiness Scale: This 1-item scale developed by the Karolinska Institute is a quick measure of "state" sleepiness. It measures how sleepy a person is in a given moment. It is useful for tracking sleepiness, but cannot be used to generalize to a person's usual feelings. Cite:

Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index: This is a standard measure of general sleep quality, which has been used for over 20 years in the sleep literature. It has been relatively well-validated, though it is widely accepted that it is an imperfect measure. However, it remains one of the most important measures in sleep research and has been used in many clinical populations. Cite: Buysse DJ, Reynolds CF, 3rd, Monk TH, Berman SR, Kupfer DJ. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index: a new instrument for psychiatric practice and research. Psychiatry Res. May 1989;28(2):193-213.

Psychomotor Vigilance Task (Palm Version): The PVT was developed by Dr. David Dinges over 20 years ago and remains the most well-validated indicator of performance deficits attributable to sleep loss. Cite: Dinges DF, Powell JW. Microcomputer analyses of performance on a portable, simple visual RT task during sustained operations. Beh Res Meth Instr Comp. 1985;17:652-655. This version was developed by the Walter Reed Army Institute for Research, to run on a Palm device. It is free to use for non-profit, educational use only, available from the software publisher. Cite: Thorne DR, Johnson DE, Redmond DP, Sing HC, Belenky G, Shapiro JM. The Walter Reed palm-held psychomotor vigilance test. Behav Res Methods. Feb 2005;37(1):111-118.

Relaxing Imagery Script: This script walks patients through a complex exercise where they imagine a relaxing scene. Using their senses, they engage this image and make it richer. This can be a powerful relaxation technique if used properly.

Sleep Diary (Handout): This is the handout that I use with patients to record their sleep. It holds 1 week of data and captures time in bed, sleep latency, total sleep time, awakenings, wake after sleep onset, overall sleep quality and morning sleepiness.

Sleep Diary (Excel Template): This Excel template goes with the handout. Fields in red are automatically computed so they should not be edited. Highlighted fields are weekly averages. Hidden columns are for computations. Times should be entered with hours, minutes and AM/PM separately (except midnight is 0:00 AM instead of 12:00 AM).

Stanford Sleepiness Scale: This is another standard, 1-item measure of sleepiness in a given moment. Cite: Hoddes E, Zarcone V, Smythe H, Phillips R, Dement WC. Quantification of sleepiness: a new approach. Psychophysiology. Jul 1973;10(4):431-436.

Boundary Questionnaire: The full, automated version of this useful measure. The concept of "boundaries" refers to a personality dimension of "thick" versus "thin" boundaries. Note that since the BQ is copyrighted and proprietary, this is for informational use only. Cite: Hartmann E. Boundaries in the Mind. New York: Basic Books, 1993.

BSI Scoring Template: The BSI is a great instrument, but it can be difficult to score. This template makes that easy. Note that since the BSI is copyrighted and proprietary, this is for informational use only. Cite: Derogatis LR. Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI), administration, scoring and procedure manual. Minneapolis: National Computer Systems, Inc, 1993.

Feeling Words: A list of words to describe feelings, both positive and negative. Many patients with affectove disorders (such as depression), cognitive problems, or other disorders that produce fluctuations in mood find it difficult to express their feelings, or find labels for their feelings -- especially positive. This list of words is meant to help those people.

First Session Outline: An outline for intake interviews. This covers a basic psychological intake, including consent, presenting problems, history of problems, family and social history, medical history, psychological history, and characterizing current state. It also sets up further sessions. This is a good outline for students and others learning how to structure an initial interview.

Inpatient Group Psychotherapy Plan: This is a brief manual for an inpaient group that I developed for the UCSD inpatient unit. It was designed as a "Stress Management" group, as patients who suffer from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, severe depression, or any of the other conditions that would lead them to the inpatient unit all have some difficulty with stress management on a number of levels. This format allows the prticipants to share common experiences in a relatively unstructured setting, compared to other activities. Please contact me if you are interested in utilizing this group.

Letter and Category Fluency: Anyone who is familiar with any kind of neuropsychological testing should be familiar with the Letter and Category Fluency tests (otherwise known as F A S and Animals). For those who want a simple handout for administration and scoring, this should be useful. A good citation for this test is: Gladsjo JA, Schuman CC, Evans JD, Peavy GM, Miller SW, Heaton RK. Norms for letter and category fluency: demographic corrections for age, education, and ethnicity. Assessment. Jun 1999;6(2):147-178.

Mini Mental Status Exam: The Folstein Mini Mental Status Exam is a standard instrument in cognitive assessment, especially for dementia. Many versions exist online, but this one should be easy to follow, administer and score. However, only trained and qualified personnel should use this, as this measure has many limitations. Cite: Folstein MF, Folstein SE, McHugh PRo Mini-mental state. A practical method for grading the cognitive state of patients for the clinician. J Psychiatr Res 1975;12:189-98.

Systematic Assessment of Treatment Emergent Events: This symptom inventory was developed by the National Institute of Mental Health in the early 1980s to serve as a method for better documenting side effects in clinical trials. It is well-validated and has been used as an interview and self-report measure. The first citation for the SAFTEE is: Levine J, Schooler NR. SAFTEE (Systematic Assessment for Treatment Emergent Events). A New Technique for Deteching Side Effects in Clinical Trials. Clinical Neuropharmacology. 1984;7(Suppl 1):856-857.