Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia is effective at reducing insomnia and mental fatigue among military personnel, according to a new study, reports WHTC.

For the new analysis, published online in Sleep, researchers recruited 151 active-duty U.S. Army personnel stationed at Fort Hood, Texas who had chronic insomnia and randomly assigned half of them to receive six weekly 60-minute sessions of a treatment cognitive behavior therapy for insomnia (CBTi).

All the soldiers had served at least one military deployment in or around Iraq or Afghanistan. The average age was about 32, and more than 80 percent were male.

CBTi is a short-term, goal oriented type of psychotherapy that tries to change destructive thinking and behavior. It has been successfully used since the 1960s in civilian populations to treat several clinical problems besides insomnia.