The Treatment of Insomnia: New Developments

People tend to use the word insomnia casually, but insomnia is more than just occasional tossing and turning in bed. It is a debilitating, often chronic illness. To be diagnosed with true insomnia, you must have a problem falling asleep, staying asleep or getting enough rest from sleep that interferes with work or other everyday tasks. People with insomnia often find it difficult simply to get through the day.(1)

Six of the ten most frequently prescribed insomnia drugs have never actually been studied for this use; the most frequently administered drug has been the subject of a single study, which, incidentally, suggested that it did not work.

Figure 1 shows that a drug that was prescribed 2.75 million times in 2002 had been studied only once; between 0.5 and 1 million prescriptions of two other drugs were written without any study having been carried out; between 0.25 and 0.5 million prescriptions were written for three others, also without a single study supporting their use for insomnia.

For many years, there was very little research on insomnia. Recently, however, this has begun to change. A number of new studies are providing important new information that may lead to new and better weapons in the battle against insomnia.

• Chronic insomnia interferes with the ability to work and to perform ordinary daily tasks.
• Insomnia needs to be treated directly, even when it co-exists with serious medical and psychiatric conditions.
• There are effective non-drug therapies.
• Treating insomnia along with a related psychiatric or medical condition is not only possible, but can even improve the related condition.