The authors of a paper published in The Lancet (see source link) claim that some of the most commonly prescribed drugs (antidepressants and antihistamines) have yet to be approved for treating insomnia.
This further highlights the need for more research to evaluate how effective individual drugs are when it comes to treating insomnia.
The research prompted the National Institutes of Health in the USA to state that only two treatment options (cognitive behavioral therapy and approved hypnotic drugs) have sufficient evidence to support their use for the treatment of insomnia.
When it comes to hypnotic drugs, benzodiazepines are said to be effective over the short term, but evidence of how effective these drugs are over the long term is still scarce. With CBT, we know that sleep improvement is sustained over time.
I'm a big supporter of cognitive behavioral therapy - and seeing as how it's one of only two treatment options that the NIH recognize as an effective treatment, surely it's time that it was made more readily available?
Source: The Lancet
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Last updated: February 18, 2013
