Effectiveness of Warm and Cold Hydrotherapy to Reduce Insomnia Level of Elderly in Service Area of Parongpong’s Community Health Center West Bandung

Abstract

Insomnia or sleeping difficulty is one of the problems that are often experienced by the elderly. It reduces the sleep hours and put them into more vulnerable condition such as fatigue and dizziness. During observations in caring an elderly family, elderly struggled to overcome the difficulty to sleep. Based on the experiences the authors are interested to find out whether warm and cold water effective to reduce insomnia level in elderly. A quasi-experiment with pre-test and post-test design was employed to examine the effectiveness of both of interventions. Test was administered to the study before and after the 11 days of intervention using insomnia rating scale. Data were analyzed by using a paired t test to compare the sig. values for both interventions. Result shows that insomnia levels decreased from moderate to mild level after warm and cold hydrotherapy as well after warm hydrotherapy. Sig. values for both interventions is <0.05. Moreover Sig. values indicate that combination of warm and cold water is slightly more effective than warm water alone. Although the sample of this study is limited, therapies proved its own effectiveness. Therefore, both of them are worthy to be used by healthcare providers in handling elderly with insomnia.