Unwinding the mind and body: Evaluating progressive muscle relaxation for insomnia and fatigue in university students with psychosomatic complaints

Abstract

The present research sought to investigate whether Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) training had significant therapeutic impact on somatic symptoms, insomnia, and fatigue within the undergraduate cohort. The current research hypothesized that Progressive Muscle Relaxation training will show a statistically significant contrast in the scores obtained on scales measuring psychosomatic symptoms, insomnia, and fatigue among the within group for the pre-intervention and post-intervention test scores. The study sample, which was constituted of n=313 undergraduate university students currently enrolled in the public sector university in Peshawar, KPK. The mean age range of the students present in the study sample was between 18 and 30 years old (M=1.52, SD=5.31). From the cohort of 313 students, 21 of the said students were placed in the group on whom PMR was to be administered. The therapeutic training was opted to be 6 weeks long. The Somatic Symptom Scale-8, the Regensburg’s Insomnia Scale, and the Fatigue Assessment Scale were applied to the experimental group to appraise the level of severity reduction in study variables. The various statistical tests employed for analysis of study results comprised of the Pearson Product-Moment Correlation, the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test, and Simple Linear Regression were used. The results showed that Progressive Muscle Relaxation showed a significant reduction in scores across all variables. The regression model demonstrated that somatic symptoms were a key predictor of both insomnia and fatigue.