This is a solid medical niche that gives mental health professionals an opportunity to work with physicians, who are often without a clue how to deal with sleep problems that fall outside a narrow set of medical diagnoses.

"I’d say 90% of what sleep clinics do is assess you for sleep apnea," says Siegfried Haug, a therapist with offices in Goshen, MA, and Simsbury, CT. "Real insomnia is almost untreatable from a medical point of view, other than medication. So [physicians] are quite open to doing something else with these people."

Haug receives a steady stream of referrals from physicians--four in Goshen and three in Simsbury. About 75% of his practice focuses on sleep disorders, primarily insomnia. He expects that to increase when his book, "I Want to Sleep: Unlearning Insomnia" comes out in the spring. He would like to see it go to 100%.

Haug has been in practice for 30 years. But he started zeroing in on sleep problems in 2000, when he began seeing patients who were taking anti-depressants even though they didn’t seem to be depressed. "Doctors were prescribing them for insomnia...I found out how prevalent it really is."

He courted physicians through local hospitals by giving presentations on insomnia and sleep disorders. And he conducted workshops at colleges and libraries. Word of mouth has taken over, although Haug has a listing on Psychologytoday.com that’s also paying off.

He has a sliding scale for individual therapy with a high of $150 for a 90-minute session. Most clients pay cash for what usually turns out to be short-term therapy. Clients often begin to improve after two sessions, he reports. "It depends on how much people practice at home."

During treatment, Haug tells them that if they wake up at night, they should not try to get back to sleep immediately. Rather, they should allow themselves to fully wake up. "I teach them breathing exercises to get the focus back on their body." Stretching exercises go along with that.

Haug does two sleep-oriented therapy groups as well--one at each office location. They meet every two weeks, with 8-to-12 clients paying $40 (cash upfront) to talk about insomnia, and how Haug’s treatment regimen is working for them.

When it comes to individual therapy, he packs 8-10 clients into one day each week in his Simsbury, CT, office, with another eight or so spread over the week at his Goshen, MA, office, where he also does his writing and research.

"There tend to be more women," he says of his clientele. "That’s true of all psychotherapy, but it’s especially true for insomnia." Clients are getting younger, he adds, and the the problem very often is "stimulus overload." They’re hooked into constant audio and visual stimulation and the brain can’t shut down.

"I have parents who take 8-, 9-, and 10-year-old kids to the doctor because they don’t sleep. Their kids are plugged in and playing games nine hours a day. Then, when they finally unplug the computer and the kids can’t sleep, they call it insomnia.

"I’m getting increasingly concerned about the pharmaceutical take on it...Insomnia is a symptom, not a cause. The medication knocks out the messenger, but the symptoms are messengers of something else being not quite right."

You can contact Siegfried Haug at 151 Lake Dr., Goshen, MA 01032, (413)230-7363, email: sfhaug@gmail.com.