From a more science-based approach, sleep compression therapy is, from what I've read, the only thing that efficiently treats a fucked sleep rythm, and sleep depravation. Now if you're dealing with an actual underlying medical condition, sleep compression won't change a thing. But if it is basically about not having a good basic rythm to your sleep and wake time, then it is the way to go about it. It basically consists of setting a time where you get up, every single day. That includes mondays, sundays and all other days. Even days after parties, days after birthdays and what not. You then count six hours backwards, and thats the EARLIEST you can go to sleep. This results in you having a six hour window where you can sleep each day. You then keep doing that till you fall asleep when you hit that early spot, and you force yourself up whenever you have to get up. For me I set 6am as get up, and 00:00 as go to sleep. This will probably result in sleep depravation for a while, but since it is basically impossible for the body to not sleep at some point (unless there is an underlying medical condition) you will end up going to sleep at 00:00 in this example because you'll be devastatingly tired after a few days.
Beyond that you start making habitual stuff to make your body start preparing for sleep when you brush your teeth, and if you have a hard time going to sleep you have to be fucking pedantic about this. You wash hands, shit, pee, brush teeth and whatever else you do in the same exact order. You do the exact same routine in the exact same order every time you're about to go to bed.
Actual diseases aside, this has an efficacy that is well above any other tested method of teaching people how to get a normal healthy sleeping routine.
